Humanity
by Colvine
Summary: Harkness/OMC. The Lone Wanderer is trying to decide what exactly humanity means in the Wasteland, and ends up discovering that it can be found in strange places.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Well, I do own a copy of Fallout 3.

**Warnings:** Keep in mind that this is a fanfic of an M-rated game. So, swearing, violence, drug use and sexual themes are possible. Most of them are probable, too.

The inspiration for this story started when I was in the actual game, going to find the runaway kids and then some Talon guys showed up. The two idiots just kind of stood there, and I though about how that might have really played out. Then I got a little bit attached to them. And the rest of the story, well, it only really worked for me when I was playing with a male character, so ... yeah. If it bothers you too much, well, then -Jedi Hand Wave- "This isn't the fic you're looking for."

**Humanity**

I pause suddenly in my interrogation of Pinkerton about the history of Rivet City. This relieves both of us, since I'm bored out of my mind and he is hostile and stubborn about giving up any sort of information.

I stopped speaking because I have just noticed a holo-tape on Pinkerton's desk (hidden beneath mountains of other things). I could be completely wrong, but this reminds me of the other tapes that I have found recently in doctors' offices. All of them were to do with Zimmer's android. The very same goddamned phantom android that I have been seeing fleeting traces of for weeks, months even, all across the Wasteland, and there is another tape sitting here in Pinkerton's little hideaway. I have to ask about it.

"Have you heard anything about an android?" I ask suddenly. I notice that he looks surprised, and pounce on it. "He was looking for a facial reconstruction and a memory wipe. I can't imagine there's anyone more qualified for it than you in the Capitol Wastes," I continue quickly, pandering shamelessly to Pinkerton's massive ego. In fact, I think I should charge Moira extra for this. Going to this length to find the truth really goes above and beyond the call of duty, and dealing with Pinkerton has to be worth something extra.

After a few moments of suspicious dithering, his pride wins out and he begins to explain at length about his genius.

I smile and nod with the requisite enthusiasm, and ask, rather more meekly than I like, if I might be able to download the records to my Pip-Boy, to admire the before and after pictures. With some luck, I might even find some sort of historical record as well, and I can appease Moira with an accurate history of Rivet City at the same time. Kill two bloatflies with one bullet.

The pandering serves its purpose and Pinkerton agrees to let me see his computer. I am relieved, because the longer I spend in his presence, the more tempting it becomes to simply shoot him and hack the terminal. I could probably have done it, but this is better. Less conscience-straining.

I plug my Pip-Boy into the old, well-used terminal and start downloading. I figure I can sort through it and discard the junk later. And there might be something amusing in here, like the diaries of Pinkerton. Either way, the sooner I'm out of here, the better.

I scroll down the list as I'm waiting for the copy to finish, and notice a transcript from some old meeting. It would have been about when Pinkerton claimed to have founded Rivet City. Thinking that this might be what I'm looking for, to finish off Moira's book. Hearing the tell-tale 'ping' that signals the completion of the download, I mark it out to come back to later, and say my farewells to Pinkerton.

Though the curiosity about the android's identity is killing me, I'm going to wait to check the photographs, and I'll wait even longer to check Pinkerton's notes. There's only so much self-congratulatory crowing you can read.

Also, I have some thinking to do; I need to decide what the hell I'd do with the android, and I feel like I should decide just what that is before I know who it (he?) is.

/\/\/\

"You've been rather busy lately." My thoughts are interrupted abruptly, and I feel myself making a rapid shift from bewildered to annoyed straight on to angry as the irate woman before me concludes her tirade. I had just trekked back into the non-Mirelurk infested area of Rivet City and I barely had time to wipe the sweat from my brow when this crazy old woman grabs me and pulls me aside, without so much as a hi-how-are-you before she starts browbeating me.

"I'm sorry?" I ask, straining for politeness despite the counteracting effect of my time in the Wastes. I find that if nothing else it shocks people into confused silence for a few seconds as they grapple with the fact that their parentage, mother or face has not yet been insulted. Of course, it also marks me out as an outsider (and Three-Dog crowing about Arefu and that stupid violin does not help matters any).

This time it doesn't work, and she keeps talking as if I hadn't spoken at all. I wonder idly if this is a rehearsed speech, and that's why she is still so unwilling to acknowledge my speaking. "Or maybe you have some personal grudge against an innocent Android, who simply wants to be left alone," she says, and suddenly I understand. "Please tell me, I'd really like to know."

I pause expectantly before answering, waiting for another interruption. When she looks at me impatiently, I answer her. "I prefer it when people introduce themselves before criticizing my morals. You apparently feel you know exactly who I am, but the feeling is not at all mutual."

"Victoria Watts." She looks as though she will continue, so I resume speaking pre-emptively. "Alright then, Ms. Watts. What exactly do you propose I do? You understand that I have been offered a significant reward for returning the machine to Zimmer?" She nods, opening her mouth as if to object to the word 'machine' and for once I might agree with her, but I want to seem as mercenary as possible. I cut her off, "And I assume you realize also how harsh this Wasteland is, and that this reward may very well be necessary to my own survival? I have not lived this long out here through the charity of strangers, Ms. Watts."

"How much have you learned about him, through your 'investigations'?" She asks suddenly, avoiding the real issue, I think. "I know that someone has performed a memory wipe and a facial reconstruction," I reply, studiously avoiding referring to the android; I'm not sure whether to say 'it' or 'him'. She would take the latter as a victory, and I don't want my cooperation to be taken for granted here. "I think I know who performed the operations. I haven't looked into it yet; I don't know the android's new identity." All technically true, if you feel like quibbling. I haven't actually read the file yet.

"Good. Don't. I don't know if you realize, but he is now, for all intents and purposes, human. A thinking, feeling human being." Hearing her talk down at me and question whether I understand the implications of my own actions, I feel another burst of anger, distributing another small shot of adrenaline to my system.

The adrenaline is probably all that is keeping me on my feet at this point, after spending an hour dodging Mirelurks and Pinkerton's homicidal system of booby traps, then taking a quick stroll back to Rivet City through the midday heat. All I want to do is crawl back to my rented room in the Weatherly, peel off this stinking leather and sleep for a day. And pop a RadAway for good measure, after my little dip into the Potomac, although that is always truly unpleasant on its way out of my system. I'm bruised, scraped and battered, I think that I have a Mirelurk bite and definitely a few claw swipes, and I want this stupid woman to stop causing me moral dilemmas and just go away.

She probably senses my weakness, because she moves in for the proverbial kill. "Look, all I'm asking is that you bring Zimmer this component and tell him the android is dead. Don't ask me how I got it, but it is unique to this particular sort of android. He'll believe you, and leave the poor man alone. Think it over, please," she says, and holds out a small, mechanical-looking device. I would be better able to analyze it if I weren't practically asleep on my feet.

I look at it warily for a moment, some corner of my mind that has saved me countless times before cautioning me that it might be a trap. Finally, overcome by weariness, I hold out my hand. She places the component into my gloved palm and then pushes my fingers around to shelter it with something close to gentle protectiveness.

It glows gently and the light seeps out between my fingers. For some reason it still feels warm. Must just be residual body heat, I reason, storing it in a reinforced pocket on my forearm near my Pip-Boy. "I'll consider it." She nods and walks off.

I proceed up the stairwell absently, lost in thought, and bump into a security guard heading in the opposite direction. Stumbling backwards and on the verge of falling down the stairs, I flail and grab for the railing. My fingers slip off and I think detachedly 'stupid cut-off gloves.' Then I think that I might be about to crack my skull and die, and that would be a remarkably stupid last thought.

Luckily, while I am thinking the officer has grabbed my shoulder and arm, and I am no longer in danger of tumbling down the stairwell to my death. I finally take a look at the officer, and just my luck, it's Chief Harkness.

"Do try not to plunge to your death. It would be terrible for Rivet City if Three-Dog's lone wanderer, who is apparently immune to 'Death by Super Mutant', were to be killed be a Rivet City stairwell." I may be hallucinating, but I think he just cracked a joke. An honest-to-god joke! Will wonders never cease?

"I'll try," I reply, and make to move on, up the stairs. My leg doesn't cooperate, and I look down at it. My hair falls across my eyes in dark clumps, and I flick it away in irritation. What do you know; I was right about the Mirelurks taking a few swipes at me. This one didn't look so bad when I saw it, and it didn't do more than twinge when I walk, which is nothing compared to most injuries I sustain. This means that I didn't bother bandaging it, but it is still oozing blood, and it has been at least two hours. That isn't good.

Grunting with the exertion, I twist around to sit down and fumble in a pouch on my belt for one of my Stimpacks. Peeling the stiff leather away from the cut slightly I curse, then press the Stimpack into my thigh near the cut. I grip the now-empty syringe until my knuckles turn white as muscle at the very base of the cut (deceptively shallow; it probably nicked a vein) begins to knit itself beck together. This is not a pleasant process, and I feel myself breaking into a sweat before the cut is repaired, thanking god that it isn't a broken bone because those _really_ hurt.

Chief Harkness is still looking on bemusedly, and I stand up gingerly, stuffing the empty syringe pack into the pouch on my belt. "Sorry about that. I'll just be on my way now," and I walk up the stairs, trying to avoid hobbling for the sake of my pride.

Vera Weatherly's pet robot takes one look at me and tries to give me the medical attention that I so obviously need. I side-step it; I still don't like the look of that spinning blade, not even after years of living around Andy. I barely remember to smile at Bryan, who is sitting at a table in the front room picking at what looks, amazingly, like one of the vegetables from the science lab. Some things apparently never change.

Inspecting the cut leather of my pants again in the safety of my hotel room, I curse again. I'm going to have to mend that, or pay someone else to do it, and I have neither the caps nor the material to spare. I really hate Mirelurks. I remove the rest of the layer of leather lining my body gingerly, jab my arm with a Med-X so I'll be able to sleep, and fall into the bed without bothering to remove the sweat encrusted clothing that is attached to my skin. The bed is blissfully soft, and with the Med-X numbing me I'm asleep almost before I hit the pillow.

/\/\/\

When I wake up, I experience the small moment of panic when I realize that this is not, in fact, my room in Vault 101. It doesn't seem to matter where I am, or how long I have been away from that place. Every once in a while, I still wake up and freak out, although it has become much less common recently.

I can't really imagine why it's the Vault I look for; the run-down shack in Megaton is more my home than the Vault could ever have been. Maybe that is because it's mine. I feel like everything in that place, inferior though some of it may be, is mine.

Sitting up, I groan. I should have changed before falling asleep. I feel disgusting, and the feeling isn't new to me at all. I can count on one hand the instances that I have been properly clean since being ejected from the Vault.

It's times like this that I really wish I had taken Burke up on his offer, because Tenpenny Tower had some of the most pure water in their plumbing I have ever seen outside of a Vault. A bath in irradiated water tends to leave you felling dirtier afterwards than you did stepping in, and you need to take either Rad-X or RadAway. Both are unpleasant, and I think that Rad-X is mildly addictive. RadAway could never be addictive; the way it cleans your system of radiation is not something that you want to experience again ever, never mind often.

While I'm complaining to a captive audience, I guess I should just get it all out of my system. This place, the Wasteland, is so hostile. Not just the people, the environment seems to want you to give up and die. Everything is volatile or dangerous or deceptive, and you always feel death creeping up on you, or lurking in the corner of your eye, or waiting to leap out of the shadows.

And everyone wants something from you, and they're always trying to get it from you for nothing. The Raiders want entertainment, the Traders want caps, and everyone else wants help, or protection or _something._ No one does anything out of the goodness of their heart, no one trusts anyone unless they've known you from birth (and not always, even then), and people always expect the worst from me. Sometimes I just want to prove them right, and be the terrible asshole that people obviously expect; just take what I want, do what I want and not bother with the objections from my conscience or sense of justice.

But I don't, of course. Why? I don't know anymore. Before, in the Vault, maybe it was because Dad would be disappointed, or the guards would get me, or just that I was acting according to my sense of right and wrong. But now I can just run away or kill people. And my father has no right to be disappointed by anything I do; he abandoned me, he washed his hands of me, and he would be lying if he said he didn't know what the Overseer was likely to do. He's that smart at least.

So what is stopping me from doing what I want? My principles?

Good lord. I must be a total idiot. I suppose that they are valuable, but what good will they do me if I starve because I refuse to steal?

Ah, fuck. Morality is so complicated in the Wasteland.

This latest convoluted situation is a prime example. I lurch over to my pack, next to the heap of discarded clothing, and take inventory in my head. It has become almost automatic, and the list of possessions is depressingly short, (and most of it is weaponry).

A hunting rifle (if not the thing closest to my heart then at least the thing that keeps it beating), a long, notched combat knife, the beautiful old Magnum (Agatha says her late husband called it Blackhawk, but the day I start naming my guns is the day that I go utterly nuts), the leather suit, which is starting to really show its age, some energy cells that I'm going to sell to Flak, in exchange for as much ammo as I can get. A pair of sunglasses I found on that crazy bastard near Paradise Falls, a few sets of Vault-issue uniforms that are now filthy and grubby, an extra pair of sturdy old boots that I removed from the latest Raider camp, a surgeon's outfit, Wastelander clothing, leather gloves.

A collection of spare parts, mechanical components to repair my gear when I can, and whatever beat-up, worn-out medical supplies I can scrounge. I also have a small stockpile of chems hidden in various pockets and pouches, but I have to be careful with those, because I swear the junkies can smell it on you when you've got their next fix.

And I carry as many caps with me as I can, but I always leave at least one hundred at home as well, just in case something really crappy happens and I suddenly need it. It's a weird feeling, having a place that you feel is safe enough to leave your shit in, and have it still there when you come back for it. Of course, it helps that Wadsworth with the flamethrower and spinning blades is there (and Dogmeat).

I still feel a bit guilt about leaving him behind, but bringing him with me to Rivet City seemed like a bad idea, because the strange mutt seems to like swimming, and I don't want to be fishing him out of the river the whole time I'm out here. Anyways, I have an arrangement with Maggie and Harden to feed him; Wadsworth gives them five caps a day, they buy him a Brahmin steak a day and they get to split the rest. And he seems to like Maggie, which is weird because that dog doesn't like people.

My Pip-Boy is a class all on its own. It gives me light, radio, all the information storage I could ever want, a map that updates itself as I travel, and of course V.A.T.S. I don't like to use that though. It feels like a controlled adrenaline rush, for one thing, and it leaves me weak and shaking. And I am very uncomfortable with handing over partial control of my nervous system to the Pip-Boy, no matter how useful I find it to be.

Right now, though, I wish it weren't quite so useful, because in here is the potential to ruin someone's life. I don't know whether I can think of the android as being alive and, well, human for lack of a better word, but right now he thinks that he is. Maybe that's all that matters.

That Commonwealth technology would be a dream to play with, though. And I'm sure I could get a tidy pile of caps from Zimmer while I'm at it.

Fuck, what do I do? There has do be a better way out of this.

I sit there for a long time, thoughts swirling too fast to help me, too frenziedly to connect. In one hand I'm clutching the android component from Victoria Watts, in the other a handy little backup disk that I 'borrowed' from Pinkerton's lab. Physical reminders that I have a choice to make.

It seemed so simple, from the outside. Zimmer was an asshole with a malfunctioning runaway machine. He was willing to pay handsomely, and give me a new toy, if I could bring it back for him.

But now I've got Watts' Railroad claiming that these androids have reached a state where they are close enough to human that keeping them they way Zimmer does is slavery. And that is something that I definitely do disagree with. Slavery is one of those few areas where I can still think in absolutes; right, or wrong. In this case, wrong.

I realize that these things are way more advanced than, say, a Mr. Handy or a Robobrain. In a totally different league, you might say. You can't really compare the two, and I don't consider owning Wadsworth to be the same as slavery. But are they really self-aware, sentient beings? I mean, they are at least part organic, according to Zimmer. And the motives that the android claimed for running away: guilt?

This thing could be self-aware, it could think independently, and it's got ethics! Christ, that's more than you can say for some of the Wastelanders I meet. But could that all just be part of the programming?

I call up the recording that he left for Zimmer (fuck, now I'm calling it a 'him') and played it through. It definitely sounds human. It sounds guilty and defiant and vaguely terrified. I play the next note, and now it's more elated and relieved, but the terror is stronger, too. I guess that's understandable; he was about to erase his entire identity. Just… go to sleep (and the last thing he'd see would be Pinkerton's ugly mug) and then wake up as someone completely different. It'd be like dying.

I shiver involuntarily and then look around angrily for something to wear. Sitting here in this getup - sweaty underwear and tank top – is not helping my mood any. I don't feel like running around in the leather armour today (it's hot in all the wrong ways), so I cross my fingers that I won't be getting into any fights today and put on the Wasteland gear. Then I put everything I don't need back into my backpack – an old, heavy thing, made of Brahmin leather and canvas, and damn near indestructible.

The things I do need I shove into pockets and pouches on my person. I strap the hunting rifle onto my back, although in a crowded city it's mostly for show. The Magnum hidden inside my jacket or the knife attached to my side would be far more effective. Sometimes I think that it's strange how easily I have adapted to this violent, suspicious way of life. Then I remember the first few weeks out of the Vault, and I know that I had only two choices; adapt to the Wasteland, or die at the hands of some crazed, shot-up Raider in the ass end of nowhere.

I shove the pack underneath the bed, and ponder setting a scavenged bear trap next to it. That may sound extreme, but it's about the only way to guarantee that no one messes with my stuff while I'm gone. I decide against it.

Only then, once everything else is finished, do I finally read Pinkerton's notes regarding the android. I read them all, despite the fact that most of it is self-congratulatory bullshit. I need to know everything I can about this whole stupid situation. I read the notes, as quickly as I can, then sit back in shock. This can't be right, I think. Right here in Rivet City, so close to Zimmer and neither of them realize. I feel like the audience in some sick play, where I know what's going on but the players don't.

Harkness.

Knowing who it is changes things. Fucking Harkness, who seems as human as anyone really can be, spending your whole life in the Wasteland. But then, he hasn't, really.

And it is so typical of Pinkerton to do this. Leave an activation code, as if I didn't already have enough in the way of moral dilemmas.

Then I open up the pictures, looking for confirmation. The first one is about as mechanical as you can get while still appearing human. And the second is, unquestionably, Harkness. The differences between the faces are so subtle as to hardly be noticeable, but when you put them together, all on one face, then it is just a totally different face. I will give Pinkerton this much; he's good at what he does.

Shit.

It is so much harder to sell someone out when… shit. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Can I really give him to Zimmer, when I know… What do I even know? Nothing!

No, that's not exactly right. I know he thinks that he is human. I know that even when he knew he was a machine, he felt guilt over what he was doing, and ran away. I know that even though he looks human, at least some part of him is mechanical. And I know that the Railroad believes that they are… persons. Not human necessarily, but fulfilling all of the requirements to be a person, and eligible for protection under the law. This would be a huge deal if we still had laws, wouldn't it? As it is, the problem is just my own little ethical dilemma. If I were a true Wastelander, a true merc, I would have no qualms. But apparently I'm not.

I just, need to know if he's actually… well, human isn't really the word, is it?

But, none of this needs to happen right now. If worst comes to worst and I seriously can't decide, then I'll just tell Zimmer that I've lost the trail, and destroy the holotapes. If I can't decide, no one else gets to either, and Harkness will stay Harkness until… Shit. Will he die?

_Can _he die? Because that would make the whole 'human' thing look a little bit less plausible, if he stays alive and the same age for the foreseeable future. Are his insides really the same as a human's, or was Pinkerton full of shit? If his insides are the same, what differentiates him from another human being? And does he eat? Drink? I mean, Zimmer said he does, but why? Does he actually process it for energy, is it just filtered through his system, wouldn't there be an eventual need for maintenance either way, what is his power source if not the food, how does it work…

Wow. Christ, this is what I get for working with the maintenance guys and trying to blend in. I got _too_ damn interested, that's what happened. Well, I'm tired of thinking, tired of debating, tired of caring. I want to get drunk, I want to punch something, I want to be destructive and uncaring and self-centred and not worry about anyone but me. Sometimes I think that the Raiders have the right idea.

As I head for the Muddy Rudder, I am still thinking along these same dangerous, angry lines and apparently it shows on my face, because most people give me a wide berth. But because the universe has a sense of humour (and an unfunny one at that) someone does stop me, and they are bearing the slightly less filthy than usual clothing that marks them out as Rivet City security.

Not, thankfully, Harkness, but some woman I've spoken with once or twice. Is it Judy? Janie? No, Jessica, that's it. Jessica looks at me warily, and then hands me a scrap of decaying paper, asks "Have you seen C.J. Young around lately? Her parents have reported her missing." I want to say, 'so what?' but kids are important these days. There are so few of them, after all. "No, sorry, I haven't seen her," I reply, distractedly.

"If you do, let us know." I nod, moving on already.

/\/\/\

Down in the Muddy Rudder, a little bit later and halfway through a disgusting, watered-down Scotch that tastes like Brahmin piss smells, something occurs to me. I look around the room for Tammy Hargrave (it's after noon, she's always here). "Hey, Tammy. I haven't seen James around lately," I remark casually.

She slurs a reply, and I feel a sudden urge to do violence. I was wondering why the kid is such a little monster, but his mother makes me understand. Completely. "Yeah, th' little shit's run off somewhere. He'll be back."

"Do you remember when he 'ran off'?" I ask, carefully avoiding accusing her of anything (that will only make her act defensive, and that is the last thing I need). She shakes her head, and then pointedly returns to her drinking. I curse, deciding that C.J. definitely ran off with James. Where the hell would they go? Not in Rivet City, obviously, or someone would have found them already. Which means that the little idiots are _outside, _hiding somewhere in the Capital Wasteland.

Fuck. Now I feel obligated to find them (read: I'm secretly grateful for the distraction). There'd better be a reward for this.

I call up my Pip-Boy's map function, centre it on Rivet City and zoom in. They're two little kids who've spent their lives in one of the safest places in the Wastes; they won't have gone far. All I can see within walking distance of the city is a train station. Thinking that this should be a relatively short trip, I walk up to the market to unload the energy cells on Flak, tuck my caps away and depart Rivet City for the nearby train station.

/\/\/\

So, I wrote this all in one big lump, but I'm putting it up in chapters because I suspect those are easier to read. See you in a bit (figuratively)!

Colvine


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **Well, I do own a copy of Fallout 3.

**Warnings:** Keep in mind that this is a fanfic of an M-rated game. So, swearing, violence, drug use and sexual themes are possible. Most of them are probable, too.

The inspiration for this story started when I was in the actual game, going to find the runaway kids and then some Talon guys showed up. The two idiots just kind of stood there, and I though about how that might have really played out. Then I got a little bit attached to them. And the rest of the story, well, it only really worked for me when I was playing with a male character, so ... yeah. If it bothers you too much, well, then -Jedi Hand Wave- "This isn't the fic you're looking for."

**Humanity**

If I were clever, I would have checked from the elevated tower to see if there was anything threatening down there, but I was rather distracted; Harkness was on guard duty and I was torn between not looking at him at all and staring like a kid in a gun shop. Turns out I made the worst possible compromise, by not looking at first, then glancing over, finding myself unable to look away, and tripping over a bit of metal on the bridge.

Real fucking smooth.

And so, caught up in my embarrassment and inner turmoil, I almost walk into one of the Talon boys' traps. Luckily some small part of my brain was still paying attention to my surroundings, and I notice the small metallic noises that signify impending gunfire in the mind of any seasoned wanderer of these fine Wastes. Almost without prompting from my brain, I find myself diving for the big map of the local subway stations, pulling the hunting rifle off of my back and throwing my back against the map.

I listen to the Talons as they erupt into movement, and guess that there are three of them. They seem to like travelling in threes. Unfortunately, I also hear a child whimpering, which means that they must have already found James and C.J., and that makes this all so much more complicated.

As if it wasn't already. I'm facing three armoured Talon mercs, with no armour and two guns. My two _favourite_ guns, but still.

One of the idiots is carrying a police baton, and he comes running at the map that I'm hiding behind, with enough cover fire that I can't just shoot the bastard from a distance and have done with it. So when he comes around the corner I'm waiting for him. More specifically, the butt of my rifle is waiting for his face. He drops, groaning, and I feel a moment of pity. But that is dangerous, so I squash it and shoot him. That leaves two.

I crouch down, trying not to touch the body next to me, pull my Magnum, and peer around the corner. A barrage hits the barrier but it's too high, where my head would have been if I were standing. I aim in the general direction and let off three shots, unable to aim properly, and then hurl myself back into cover. I hear muffled curses and something that sounds like a gun dropping, which means one more out of commission. I hope I didn't damage the gun, which I think was an assault rifle; that could be worth a lot, and if it's Chinese I might keep it (if I can find myself any parts for the damn thing).

One more. I listen for the whimpers, thinking that the last one will probably either be next to his friend or using them for cover. Looking in the direction I think they're coming from, I see that I am right. There's a Talon boy with one hand around James' arm and the other clutching a nasty looking shotgun. While I mostly despise shotguns, the nice thing about them is that they have very little range, so long as you're using shells. And he's aiming one-handed.

So I swing the gun up, line it up, shoot before he gets the chance to shoot one of the kids (or me). I hit him in the head, blowing merc-pieces all over the wall behind him, but he manages to pull the trigger before his brain cells make friends with the wall, and suddenly my right arm is on fire, and there are freezing, burning needles running up and down my side. Before the pain can incapacitate me I turn to where the last goon should be.

And fuck it if he isn't clutching the assault rifle (it _is_ Chinese) in his left hand. It's dipping and weaving so much that he couldn't hit me if he were pressing the gun to my head, but I shoot him anyways, steadying my own, shaking arm with my left hand. Once, twice, and three is the magic number. He collapses and I turn to the kids, standing in the shadow of the subway building next to a tiny plastic table that is still, for some reason, standing there.

Then I wrinkle my brow in puzzlement. Weren't there two of them? I focus, and manage to interpret the strange scene before me. As soon as I turned my back, C.J. must have grabbed the shotgun, because I am once again looking down the business end of it, to C.J. standing at the other end with a terrified, defiant expression on her face. She is definitely trying to hide James from me, and with good reason as he is curled up, clutching his leg and whimpering quietly.

I look her in the eye, put my pistol slowly back into its holster, and put my hands up, palms out placatingly. "Look C.J., I'm not here to hurt you. I want to take you two back home. Your parents are worried." More like frantic.

The girl lowers the gun quickly, walks over to take my hand, (left thankfully) and pulls me over to the boy. She begins babbling, and her voice has an edge of hysteria to it. "They shot him in the leg so we couldn't run away. You have to help him!" I see a bloodstain on his left leg, by the shin. It looks like it glanced him, luckily.

I sway slightly on my feet, and suddenly notice that I am in pain. A lot of it. The sweat creeping down my forehead stings as it falls into my eye. My forearm is throbbing none-too-gently, my ribs scream at me every time I move, and I'm afraid to look at my clothing to see the blood stains. "I will, but first I need to fix myself, O.K.?" She nods wordlessly. "Do you thing you can help me out?" Another nod. "Alright. I need you to get his pant leg away from the wound. But try not to touch it, because your hands are dirty."

"'Kay," she mutters quietly and turns to her friend, kneeling down next to him. I tune them out.

I'm relieved that we're in the shade already, because I'd really rather not haul my bleeding ass anywhere right now. I pull the pouch where I keep my chems and medical crap off of my belt and spread it out on the table, alongside one of the bottles of purified water that I filled whilst visiting Tenpenny Tower. Then I sit down with a grimace and try to avoid thinking about the fact that I am about to try to yank a small chunk of metal out of my own abdomen.

I'll need a Med-X, and something to use as a bandage. Yes, I still have those strips of bed sheet (also from Tenpenny Tower. I'd like to say that I did unspeakable things to get them, but really I just snuck them out of one of Tenpenny's many rooms; he'll never even notice they're gone), they will do fine. I count the Stimpacks I have left (twelve) and decide not to use any yet.

Gritting my teeth, I pull my sleeve up over the wound in my arm. Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be a shell in the wound, and it's quite shallow. I pour water over it sparingly, and then wrap it tightly with a strip of cloth. Now for the really fun part. With as little bending as possible I open the jacket (hardly any blood on it!) and pull up the undershirt, hissing as it scrapes over the bullet hole.

Fuck. The little fucker is still in there.

I grab the Med-X off the table and inject it into my arm. Then while the pain-numbing is still at peak effectiveness, I scramble in the pouch for my tweezers, and poke the gash tentatively. "Ow! Fuck!" I prod slightly deeper and find it, then grab on with the tweezers. Pulling it out brings tears to my eyes and I growl every expletive I've ever heard and some I make up for these very occasions. Gingerly I pour a little bit of water over it and wrap another, longer sheet around my midsection once, then decide that this will have to do. Looking at the little shell I have just pulled out of my side, I wonder what to do with it.

I look up and jump. Then I wince and curl an arm around my aching flank. C.J. and James are staring at me with wide, fascinated eyes. I get up off the chair to sit cross-legged on the ground in front of the boy. "Okay kid; let me see that leg of yours." He looks at me cautiously then edges slightly closer and extends his leg with a wince. I smile absently at C.J. in thanks and then look at the wound. It doesn't seem too bad, but it does look painful and quite dirty. In fact, the boy himself looks dirty, underfed, and angry at just about everything. I recognize that look, and feel a wave of nostaliga (for Butch of all people).

"So what are you two doing out here?" I ask as I cut a strip of cloth into the shape that I need. C.J. looks to the boy, and neither of them answer. "Running away?" I prompt. He glares at me with dark, accusing eyes from under filthy bangs, and the girl looks away guiltily. "What's it to you if we were?"

I lean in closer to inspect for metal in the gash and see nothing. "Good, there's nothing in here. Oh, it's nothing to me. I was just wondering what you thought you'd do out here." I turn and grab the water bottle and pour some of it over my hands to remove as much grime as I can. "Those guys over there," I continue, indicating the dead men around us, "would probably have taken you out to Paradise Falls, and you would have been sold to the highest bidder." I look from James to C.J. and then back again, then rinse the wound out with the water. He tenses and clenches both hands into fists, but doesn't react otherwise. Tough kid.

"You understand what goes on at Paradise Falls?" They both nod, C.J. solemnly and James rebelliously. I wrap the strip around his leg once, twice and three times, then tie it.

"I… left home when I was pretty young. If you want to do that, then you can. But if you run away now, you will almost definitely be killed, or caught by slavers. Understand?" Another set of nods. "And if you do plan on leaving, you should learn a couple of things." I notice James start to perk up and pay attention, and when C.J. notices the same thing she looks at me as though she's determined to absorb everything I say. Looks like the boy's got himself a companion. That makes it even more important that they know these things, I guess.

"You need to know a little bit about fixing things. Guns, mostly. And you _really_ should be able to shoot, if only to get yourself a Molerat or something for dinner. You have to know something about medicine, because you _will_ get hurt, living out here. Knowing how to deal with people, you know, buying and selling things, whatever, that's probably good.

And," I add as an afterthought, with a slight grin, "knowing how to pick locks comes in really handy, although if your parents catch you practicing don't tell 'em I said that to you. Understand? If you're going to leave, be prepared to deal with what's out here.

And don't lose track of what is right and what isn't. That's important." I take a gulp from the water bottle and then hand it to James. He swallows greedily before nodding his understanding at me and handing the bottle to C.J. to finish. I look at James' skinny form and sigh internally, getting a sinking feeling that I will regret trying to help this boy. No good deed goes unpunished, after all. I reach over, collect all of my medical crap, put it away and strap it back onto my belt.

Then, despite my cynicism, I reach into a different pocket and fish out most of the food I had brought with me today; a package of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes, Salisbury Steaks and an apple I bought from the Science Lab. It's only mildly radiated. James looks at them with something close to longing and C.J. with mild interest. I pull out my knife and slice the apple carefully into six pieces, two for each of us.

"Eat up, kid. They way you look right now, I doubt you could walk up a flight of stairs, forget back to the city."

James starts eating like a starving dog and C.J. with a bit more decorum. I peel open the Snack Cakes and the Salisbury Steak packaging to reveal four cakes and one nasty-looking lump of meat, brimming with preservatives. I cut the steak in threes also, and divide the four cakes between the three of us, giving the extra to James. Even though he had more food, by the time I start eating he is almost finished, and I feel anger rising in my stomach like bile, because even in a place like Rivet City where it is safe and food is relatively plentiful, there are still kids that are _way_ too close to the wrong side of starvation.

"Can you teach us that stuff, Mister?" I look up, startled. James is wiping his face with the back of his arm and looking away. Heh. 'Mister'. I couldn't be more than four or five years older than him. "What stuff?"

"What you were talking about. The stuff you need if you're living out here," he gestures with an arm spreading out to encompass the Wasteland. "Kid, I'm not going to stay here."

The boy scowls and looks over to the girl. "But, but while you're here, couldn't you show us something? Please?" Apparently she's the diplomat. Quite the pair, these two are. I sigh, recognizing my conscience rearing its ugly head again. It says that the little twerps will leave even if I don't help them, and it'll be on my head when they end up dead or enslaved. I wish it would quit doing this to me, because really, it isn't my responsibility.

"Alright, fine. Look, I'll be in town for the next week or two, because I'd rather not travel when I'm riddled with bullet holes and Mirelurk claws. So I guess I could show you something." She smiles at me fit to light up the sky, and I grimace, knowing how quickly she'll probably lose that smile. It makes me sad. "What do you want to learn?"

James answers without hesitating, "Teach me to shoot." I look over at C.J., and she glances up shyly. "Could you show my how to pick locks, please?" I smile despite myself; this girl is full of surprises. "Sure C.J. But James, you can probably get a guard to show you how to shoot. I'll teach you something more important; how to maintain a gun, take it apart, put it together and fix it when it's broken. Okay?" He looks disappointed, but he bounces back quickly. "For that, I'd need a gun."

I consider this, and draw the moment out until he's shifting in impatience, pain in his leg forgotten. "You're right. I'm not letting you mess around with mine. But where will you get one?" He glares at me, knowing that I am teasing. "How about I make you a deal? You help me carry that shotgun back to Rivet City and when I sell it I'll buy you a gun." He grins widely.

"Now try to stand up." He shifts and the girl is right beside him immediately, holding his arm. He stands, shakily, leaning on her, but when he tries to put weight on the leg he turns white and whimpers quietly. I lean forward quickly (too quickly; my midriff throbs in protest) to support him and he sits again, heavily. "You can't walk. Okay. Sit here, and I'm going to see what else I can find from those gentlemen." I toss them another water bottle and walk towards the nearest dead mercenary. Normally I would take any salvageable bits of armour as well, but it seems that I'll be giving James a lift home, and I can't carry all of it as well as him.

I grab the combat shotgun, all the rounds I can find in his pockets and just about anything else he was carrying, and haul it all over to the table where the two children are watching me silently. It weirds me out a little bit that they are so quiet. I repeat the process on the next corpse, and in addition to the assault rifle and the contents of his pockets, I see a leather chain around his neck, with a small, worn pendant attached to it. My heart skips a beat, and I can't breathe for a moment.

Sometimes, you're reminded that even the crazy assholes trying to kill you are indeed human. It isn't fun. It almost physically hurts. I force myself to look at the pendant, because this is something that I need to remember.

It looks like an old coin (a quarter?) with a hole in it to pass the chain through. It's well-worn, like someone has passed their fingers over this little scrap of metal, many times. I gaze through it absently for a little longer, wishing it didn't give this man individuality, and then undo the knot and tuck the chain and pendant gently into my pocket. I repeat the process almost mindlessly on the next man, thinking about how much this used to bother me.

Stealing from the dead, I used to call it. Now, it's almost second nature to take things from bodies that I run across (and the ones that I kill myself). I tell myself that I need it more than they do, which is true, but still; I must have had a reason, to have been so disturbed by it originally.

I look back at the two children, then take all the possessions that I have scavenged back to them and spread it all out on the table. "First lesson on Wasteland survival skills: scavenging. Now, what should I take, and what is dead weight?" The three dead guys were all seasoned mercenaries and so very little of what they were carrying would be dead weight (except for the necklace, which I shy away from thinking about). It's still a useful lesson, though.

I look through the pile. Most of it is food, although there is some extra ammo and a few Stimpacks, as well as, unexpectedly, a relatively intact, pre-War book. James points immediately to the ammo and C.J. to the food. I nod to both of them. "You're in luck; they're mercenaries, so very little of what they're carrying is dead weight. In fact, it is exactly these things that you should be looking for if you take to scavenging. Alright?"

Both nod, and watch avidly as I pack away everything I can fit onto my person, thanking god for large pockets and wishing that I had my backpack with me. I strap my hunting rifle to one hip, the assault rifle to the other, and realize that I can't sling anything across my back since I'm hauling the boy back to Rivet City. So I pass the combat shotgun back to C.J. who accepts it without a word, and motion James over. "Feeling any better, kid?" I ask. He shakes his head slowly, not looking at me.

I kneel down, my back facing him. "Hop on." I hear him get awkwardly to his feet, put a hand on my shoulder for support, then clamber onto my back. I wince as his good leg brushes my bad side, and then shift around until I can carry the boy without jostling either of our wounds too much. We set off.

It is far too hot in the Wastes today, and I am grateful that I'm not out wandering. The sun beats down on my face, and James on my back is like a boiler, and I think I'm getting a heat stroke, but the city is so close.

We reach the stairwell and two guards appear to help us back into the city, both of them holding guns and looking a little bit jumpy. "We heard gunshots," the smaller one offers by way of explanation. That was at least half an hour ago. What were they doing, waiting for the wild dogs to eat us before they came out to check? I am about to say as much when suddenly the world spins around my head. This bewilders me slightly, because I'm pretty sure my feet are still on the ground.

Then it occurs to me, in a strange, detached way that I am probably about to pass out. I set James down, ignoring his protests, and tell the two idiots that his leg is injured. Then my vision goes a little bit hazy. I feel an upward rush of air, hear James' distressed shout, and see C.J. peering at me curiously, and then soft, blessed darkness.

/\/\/\

I wake up to a ceiling less clean than the Vault, but not as filthy as regular D.C. area ceilings inevitably seem to become. That can only mean that I am in a clinic. Again. I should really stop waking up like this.

I remember fainting, after hauling the idiot kid back to Rivet City. But where are they now? I sit halfway up in alarm, then fall all the way back down in pain. I want to clutch my stomach, but moving my arm is also agony. I'm sweating heavily, and my body aches, and I feel feverish, and fuck me, this sounds a lot like the symptoms of an addiction.

What is it? I never use Jet, or Psycho, and I haven't had to haul anything anywhere in a while, so no Buffout either. I took my regular dose of Rad-Away, and I feel absolutely no urge to see the stuff ever again. That only leaves Med-X. But I'm not addicted. It's just necessary-

Fuck. Now I sound like a goddamn junkie, as if life wasn't bad enough for me.

I hate this place, this waste of a Wasteland, this dried-up, barren, disgusting shit hole that my father abandoned me to. And he did abandon me. He was a smart man, he knew how the fucking power-crazed Overseer would react, and he left anyways, because his project was more important than his child.

He was here, a few months back. Doctor Li saw me and nearly had a heart attack, poor woman. Then she told me where the bastard was holed up, and even after all those months (almost a fucking year and a half) I still wanted to go see him. I wonder if he would have recognized me. If he would have even cared that I was out here because of him, or if he would think I was a distraction to his real work.

I didn't go find him. Sometimes I want to, but most of the time I want to never think about him again – he can rot there, with his Project Purity.

Pain passes up my spine like lightning, suddenly and without warning. My muscles spasm and that sends an answering wave of pain down to my extremities, passing from my fingers to my toes in a white hot wave. I groan quietly, trying desperately not to cry out.

"Doctor!" I hear a voice, and focus desperately on that sound, trying to think about something – anything – other than the pain, which has passed from bearable to agonizing. Then there is a cup being held to my lips and I gulp greedily. I swallow and it burns my throat, brings tears to my eyes, but that is all second to the fact that it gives me a happy buzz and numbs my pain. I sigh, relax back into the bed, and open my eyes, which had been shut tightly.

"Sorry, but no Med-X for you, for obvious reasons. You're going to have to stay here for a while."

"Why," I croak, intending to ask why I am in so much pain. I open my mouth to continue, but Doctor Preston interrupts me. "You collapsed – your body gave out. You've been pushing yourself too far, for too long, kid." I'd like to bristle at the word 'kid', but that would require movement and I'm afraid to move, because that might bring the pain back. "And now that you aren't pumped full of Med-X, you're feeling the effects of it. You're going to be staying here for a while."

"The kids?" I ask, feeling unaccountably ashamed in the Doctor's unfaltering gaze. That look reminds me of my father, that's what it is. The clinical detachment is everything that my father was for most of my life, and it brings guilt up to the surface of my psyche like I am still twelve years old and shooting stupid Butch DeLoria in the ass with a pellet gun (which, by the way, was totally worth it - he squealed like a girl).

"They're fine, and James' leg is healing up quite nicely. C.J.'s parents were very grateful, and insisted on paying me for your treatment." He tactfully avoids mentioning James' mother, who probably barely noticed that her son was back. I wonder if the Youngs knew I was a junkie when they offered to pay the good doctor for my treatment.

"Fine," I say, whispering this time. "How long will I be stuck here?"

"Oh, give it a week and you should be alright," he says, then notices the look on my face and continues, "but you should be able to function in three days or so." I lay back, my eyes drifting shut again. Three days, that is too long. I can't afford to be idle, not out here.

Well, that isn't technically true; I have found myself a nice little niche out here. Frankly, it's more like a delivery boy than anything else, but hey, if people are willing to pay me to fetch things for them, who am I to object? So far, I have people who want Sugar Bombs, blood packs, my map info and Pre-War books, although I don't really let go of those until I have read them a few times (I have trouble sleeping sometimes), and scanned them into the Pip-Boy just in case. I can't say I trust the Brotherhood so much that I am willing to put the little bits humanity's heritage that I can find into their hands alone.

So, maybe I can take a few days off, for recovery purposes. But I don't like it, not at all.

I shift and move tentatively; testing how much pain it results in. When I find my limits, and which particular limbs I just shouldn't move at all, then I lay back for a minute, feeling ridiculously exhausted. Eventually I sit back up again, slowly, and look around.

I see the small clinic, fastidiously clean by Wasteland standards. Doctor Preston is sitting at his desk, reading a copy of D.C. Journal of Medicine that I brought him, in exchange for some StimPacks and RadAway There is someone, too small to be an adult so probably James, sleeping in the cot across from me. My things are on the floor next to my bed and, in a daring move, I reach down to pick up the Pre-War book I found on the Talon boy. There is, of course, a nasty stab of pain through my side, but I feel it's worth it.

It is, to my delight, stained, dirty and old, but still readable. I check the cover, but the title has been worn away. For a minute I just sit there with the book in my hands, savouring the almost infinite possibilities that this book could contain. This is, I know, a form of escapism (a word I learned from another book), a way to leave a world that I find unsatisfactory and visit one that is less so.

Before opening it, I look around again, and then notice that something is off. Someone called for Doc Preston when I woke up, and it wasn't James. That means that someone else was in here at one point, but I only see an old man and a sleeping boy right now. Ah, well. I'm too tired to care about little mysteries today. In fact, I don't even care what the book is. I just want to sleep…

/\/\/\

I wake up later. Not really sure when. I'm still laying the way I was when I fell asleep on my back, with one arm across my stomach and the other curled around the book. It says a lot about how little energy I have, that I didn't even move in my sleep.

Maybe I have been overdoing it, just a little bit.

I'm feeling a bit better now, though. I sit up slightly, and finally open the book. _Candide_, by Voltaire. Well, never heard of it before, but as good as anything for getting away from the Wasteland, I guess. I begin reading.

Later, after maybe an hour or two has passed, I notice that I haven't turned a page for a while. I think about it, and I have been staring at the same word for the last five minutes at least, and my hands are shaking. All I can think about is how hungry I am. Except the Doc has already brought me and James some food, (and then the lucky little twerp got to leave) so I can't be hungry.

I _crave_ something, and it isn't food that I am after. I want Med-X, I need to have it, there is a burning desire for it in the pit of my stomach and it is all I can think about. It is consuming my mind, and I can think of nothing else. I need it, I need it, I _need _it!

I should have known that the worst was yet to come.

The shakes spread to the rest of my body, slowly, and I begin to shiver. That bewilders me, because the room seems to be burning hot. I look over at the doctor, but he is unimpressed by my predicament; he's seen far more impressive junkies, and he knows that I am not even in the worst of it yet.

I shut my eyes, set my jaw, and try not to think about how great that next fix would feel, how the chemicals would spread through my bloodstream and leave me numb and uncaring, let me finally just drift away from everything…

Fuck.

/\/\/\

Two hellish days later, and I am free. Free to not think about the mind-numbing euphoria that was my escape. Not entirely sure I'm happy about that.

My hands still tremor every once in a while, but they are getting less frequent all the time, and I think that it will disappear eventually. I can't travel in this state, though. So I will be in Rivet City for a few more days. I guess this would be an excellent time to make good on my promise to the two little monsters.

Standing, I walk slowly over to the Young's and knock on the rusted metal door. Henry answers the door and flashes me a strained smile, obviously hoping I will go away soon. I don't oblige him, though, instead thanking him and his wife for generously covering my medical bills. He accepts my thanks as graciously as he knows how (not very), and sort of glances towards the door again, hinting not-so-subtly that he has work to do today. I sigh and turn away, ready to walk out.

C.J. chooses this moment to walk through the door, with James limping along on a shortened crutch behind her. She grins and begins to ask something, and I can see from the eager, childish smile on her face that she is about to say something that will get me into trouble with her father. I probably shouldn't be teaching twelve-year-olds how to pick locks, after all. So I interrupt, "Hey kids. Mind walking me back to the hotel?"

Then James grins and Henry looks at him with surprise. I can sympathise; the boy rarely even smirks, forget outright smiling. Before anyone can get suspicious, I am walking away, as fast as my 'crippling injury sufferer' status will reasonably allow. They follow, but instead of walking for the Weatherly I head towards the Marketplace.

Turning to them as I walk, I say "Alright, lesson two; bartering. Although I imagine that you two know just as much about this as I do." I am met with dead silence, and then I stop in a hallway to talk face-to-face. "No? Well, then I am going to sell most of the crap I picked up from the mercs, and we are going to buy you a gun." James' face almost physically lights up. "But, there are two things that you need to agree to first." He looks at me with rapt attention, and I think that I could get used to this.

"First it no threatening anyone with this thing. Not a guard, not a Radroach, not your mother, not even a goddamned Raider. Understand?" A solemn nod. "And second, no firing it without me or a guard or someone present. That does _not_ include your mother." He looks ready to object, so I continue. "That one will change, obviously, but until I know you can handle a gun safely, you are not going to play with the damn thing and shoot yourself in the foot. Or C.J. I would buy you a B.B. gun or something equally harmless, but 'harmless' is one of those things that are in short supply out here. So, no shooting without an adult. Right?"

He nods sullenly, glaring at the floor. "So, what kind of gun are we getting you?" And just like that, the grin is back. Bloodthirsty little creature, isn't he?

"You're too small to handle most of the two handed guns," he glowers but I continue speaking, "and the recoil is too much on a Magnum. Not to mention the price and scarcity. So our options at this point are pistols, of which there are three varieties: .32, 10 mm and the Chinese pistol. I suppose I should start you on a standard 10 mm pistol, the ammo will be much easier to find that way. So, follow me, and don't say anything. Alright?" More nods are my only answer.

I walk (limp) into the market and greet a few people, trying not to catch Bannon's eye – he always has so much to talk about, and I always want to throttle him by the end of one of his obnoxious little soliloquies. Today it's Shrapnel running Flak & Shrapnel's. I get on fine with both of them, as long as I don't comment on the gimmicky-ness of the names. I grunt at him by way of greeting, and he returns the grunt.

I deposit the shotgun on the counter with a deliberate _clink_. He looks at it appreciatively, and I have to agree with the assessment; say what you will about the Talons (and I have a lot to say about the bastards) they keep their guns in really nice condition. "What'll you give me for this?"

"Hundred caps." I look at him, allowing the scorn I feel for that price to show on my face. "What other guns have you got in stock right now?"

"A few hunting rifles, a new assault rifle, a couple of pistols, and a few more… personal pieces." I'm pretty sure that he means hand-to-hand type weaponry, when he says that. I can't really be sure, though. Maybe Wastelanders get really personal with their guns; I don't even want to know.

"Yeah, show me the pistols." He nods, turns and rummages for a moment in the junk heaps strewn about the stall, and returns with an armful of guns, which he proceeds to carefully spread on the counter. Two little .32's, not interested in those, a Chinese pistol, not that either, and three 10 mm pistols. One is stripped down, barely good for spare parts, one looks workable, and one has a silencer attached to the barrel.

"I'll give you the shotgun for all three of 'em. And," I set a box of shotgun ammo on the counter, "this for two boxes of 10 mm ammo." He looks tempted to haggle, but then appears to consider and then relents and agrees to my terms. I check to make sure the guns are not loaded (how stupid would I feel if I killed myself by accident, and with a wimpy little pistol to boot?), and am about to leave the market, when I remember that I'll need bobby pins for C.J.

That means that I'll need to talk to Bannon. Damnit. "Hey Bannon, sort of in a hurry, but do you have some bobby pins?"

"Well, yes, but I just have to tell you-" I almost groan, but interrupt him instead. "Sorry, not today, but I really do need those pins." He looks disgruntled but doesn't turn away the business – who would? - and pushes a bundle of them towards me from the mess on his countertop. "That's fifteen or so. Three caps." Normally I would argue, but my muscles are starting to ache again and I want to sit down. So I fish the requisite caps out, dump them on the counter, grab the pins, and I am out of the market, with two children in tow.

Out of the market I turn right, into a storage room or something. Utterly unremarkable, except that it had a filing cabinet with some still functioning locks, as well as other cabinets, a broken chair and half of a table. I set the guns down on the table and settle myself on the chair, motioning for the others to pull up something to sit on.

"Okay, I have one for each of you, plus one for spare parts." James is watching my hands avidly as I show them how to take apart the most broken-down of the three.

We spend maybe an hour on the bits and pieces of the gun and what purpose each serves, and I am amazed at how curious they are. Then I try to focus on something and I go cross-eyed and decide that it is time to stop for today. I wait until both are done with their examinations of the guns, then pick all three up, put them in the top drawer of the filing cabinet and jam it shut.

"Come back here about the same time tomorrow," I say and walk out slowly, feeling pins and needles creeping up my legs and wishing that I had had the good sense to stand up at some point. Holy shit, I sound like an old man.

I feel like an old man, right now. I really just want to sleep. And maybe never wake up.

/\/\/\

Part two.

Colvine


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **Well, I do own a copy of Fallout 3.

**Warnings:** Keep in mind that this is a fanfic of an M-rated game. So, swearing, violence, drug use and sexual themes are possible. Most of them are probable, too.

The inspiration for this story started when I was in the actual game, going to find the runaway kids and then some Talon guys showed up. The two idiots just kind of stood there, and I though about how that might have really played out. Then I got a little bit attached to them. And the rest of the story, well, it only really worked for me when I was playing with a male character, so ... yeah. If it bothers you too much, well, then -Jedi Hand Wave- "This isn't the fic you're looking for."

**Humanity**

I have spent three days teaching the little demons just about anything they ask me. Now I feel the urge to hide whenever I hear the twin patter of small, light footsteps, because they are so damned curious and intelligent, and I do not remember being this annoying when I was their age. How old are they, anyway?

On the up side though, my hands only shake once or twice in a day, and it has been a full day since I have broken out in a cold sweat or forgotten where I am. And I can walk without my legs aching. Most of the time. I don't know if I'll be able to walk all the way back to Megaton anytime soon, certainly not on my own. I may have to join up with a caravan passing that way. At least that way there'll be people to walk with, and probably a fire to eat around most nights, which is far more than I can say when I am travelling on my own.

The other thing I have been avoiding in the last few days is any contact at all with Harkness. Really, it has gotten to the point where I will run around corners and hide to avoid facing him. This may seem excessive, but it is far better than the alternative. The last time I saw him, two days ago, I looked at him for too long again. I think that he is probably getting the wrong idea, because the wrong idea makes so much more sense than 'Oh, he must think I'm, an android!'

I was looking for something on his face, in his eyes, that would scream 'Not human!' to me, something that was jarring or out of place. His eyes seemed… intense, to me. I don't know, maybe that is what I was looking for. But there was nothing to really tell me that he isn't what he seems. He looked tired, worried, irritated, all those stupid little things that everyone out here feels on a daily basis unless they're on their drug of choice-

Shit. I shouldn't have thought about that. Determinedly I try to pull my thoughts back to my travelling plans, back to Megaton, back to James and C.J., back to the weirdness with Harkness, but to no avail. It's like trying to gather water into your hands; some of it is caught, but most of it slips free to go where it will. Not that I would advise touching the 'irradiated shit' water that we have available to us out here. It really does make you sick.

That's the way to do it then. Just let my thoughts follow their natural, inane course, and I'm free. If only avoiding other things was this easy.

As I am thinking this, I walk into someone, and think, yeah, so I was sort of asking for that one. I look at the person, and holy fuck, whoever is running this crap-shoot excuse for a universe has some kind of bone to pick with me, the bastard. Any guesses who I just knocked into, or really who just knocked me over?

It's Harkness. Of course it is.

Like Murphy's Law; you try to avoid a thing, it comes looking for you. I run into that particular manifestation of Murphy's Law all the time, although it generally involves Super mutants with centaurs and huge-ass fucking mini-guns, or a slavering Yao Guai, or a Raider with a flamethrower, or… well, you get the point. And they're almost preferable to this (at least you know what the fuckers want, even if it is your guts spread all over the wall behind you), except here there is very little chance of physical injury.

Although I am sitting on my ass, and feeling a little bit fuzzy as to how I got here.

He stretches out a hand to pull me up, and I look at him for a second, wondering why I always get myself into such fucked-up, ridiculous situations as this, and why the hell I'm so clumsy lately. I mean, I was never a co-ordinated child, but I thought I had grown out of it: I can shoot a Super mutant's head off from fifty metres away (never mind that it wasn't the head I was aiming for; a head exploded, what more can you ask of a guy?), so surely I can manage to walk on level ground without randomly and spontaneously collapsing into a heap of useless limbs? No, it seems not.

Then, like an idiot I take the offered hand and haul myself back up instead of pushing myself off of the ground, making an asshole remark about watching where he's going, and stalking off. And yes, his hand feels real too. Warm, a bit dry and callused. Not at all mechanical, yet again. I don't like this at all. Contact with him is sending a slow, insistent shudder up my spine, and it isn't a revulsion-shudder. That is all kinds of bad.

Even worse than that, I think he may have noticed. I am standing upright, but he still has his hand around mine, and fuck, I'm not pulling away. I look at him, he looks at me, I feel heat spreading up the back of my neck, and _I still haven't fucking let go!_

Then finally, slowly, I pull my hand towards my body and he, just as slowly, opens his. I rub my neck with the same hand, trying to cool one or the other down – both feel uncomfortably warm. "Uh, sorry," I mumble, unable to string enough real words together to form an actual sentence.

"Yeah, I…" he trails off, looking at me with his eyes slightly widened, a little bit unfocussed. I'm relieved that I was not the only one to feel… whatever that was, and then I am just sort of irritated and a bit mortified that it happened at all. I open my mouth to say something, then shut it with a quiet 'click' as I realize that I have no idea what was about to come out of my mouth. Unfiltered, brain to mouth communication is a very bad idea – all of my thoughts should be thoroughly checked and censored before I let myself unleash them on the rest of the world because very often, nobody wants to hear what you _really_ think.

I learned that, like many other important life lessons, the unpleasant way. That isn't important though. What is important is that during this entire internal monologue, I have been staring. At him. And confusingly, he is staring back.

I feel this twisty sort of thing in my stomach, nauseating and bad and really, really good. It reminds me of the gut-clenching fear that you inevitably feel the first – and possibly every – time you see a Super mutant running at you, screaming and brandishing a nail board. Except this is a good feeling, not a piss-yourself-in-fear feeling.

Maybe that was a bad comparison. Either way, it's sort of an intense sensation. Unthinkingly, unconsciously, maybe even unwillingly, I step forward. If you look closely, and believe me, I am, you'd see him leaning towards me as well.

His eyes flicker up and down the hallway and I copy the gesture; there is no one else here. It's the area outside one of the exits from the science lab, with Doctor Li's room just across the hall. No one comes out to this part of the ship but the scientists, who are all occupied in the lab right now. I take a step backwards, into the darker, dead-end area at the end of the hall, and he follows. There must be some sort of unspoken communication going on here, like my libido is talking straight to his without any intermediaries, like brains or mouths.

I take another step, curious to see how far we will let this will play out, unable or unwilling to stop myself.

I should. I should resist this… this pull that I feel, dragging me towards I'm-not-sure-what, but it has been _so long_, and god it would feel so fucking good to be close to another person, to feel someone else's skin, without a threat, or necessity or danger or bodily harm or twenty other reasons being the only motive for it.

I step back again and he follows again and we are standing in the partial darkness. Shadows jump weirdly on his face from the flickering lights in the corridor and his dark eyes almost- wait they actually _are_ shining! Fuck, but I am too far gone to care by now, especially when he leans forward again. The thought, 'I shouldn't be doing this,' runs fleetingly through my mind once more before I bend forwards to meet him.

His lips are on mine, and his hands are just barely touching my sides. I reach for his back and shoulders, his head, his neck, and pull him towards me until we are standing almost flush against one another. I pull back to breathe and then twist my head on an angle to adjust for noses and kiss him again. Suddenly my back is pressed into the wall and Harkness is pushed up against my front, hands cushioning the back of my head and kissing me demandingly, almost desperately. It feels intoxicating and he doesn't feel at all mechanical and I really want-

Then my brain catches up with me, finally, and I know that I have to stop this. Now, or else I won't stop it at all. I pull away, gulping in air, and slide a hand in between our chests. "Wait," I pant. "I can't…" He looks at me, disappointment evident for a few seconds before being shut behind a cold mask of indifference.

"What do you mean? It is a little bit late to be objecting to my gender, considering." he states, sounding pissed off and pulling his hands from behind my head, stepping back. He would be more intimidating if he wasn't flushed and breathing quickly. As he steps away I let my arms slip down and then cross them in front of my chest and turn to lean on the wall, facing him. "Nothing like that. It's just- Ah, fuck." He looks at me sidelong, irritated and a bit curious about my strange behaviour.

I give up. I'll just ask him what _he_ thinks about this bullshit. I take a deep breath, "Look, if I knew something big, maybe something bad, about someone. Hypothetically, let's make that person you; would you want to know? Or would it be better if I just keep it to myself and we get back to… to what we were just doing?" I avoid looking at him but feel the stare boring its way into the side of my head anyway.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I want to sigh, want to scream, want to punch something; I want to do anything but try to tell this man that everything he thought that he knew about himself was a lie. But I have a moral fucking duty. Thank you so much, Father, for giving me that. "If there was a- like, a secret about you. A big one, an important one. Would you want to know about it, want to know the truth? Or would you prefer to be blissfully ignorant, and just live your life?"

He looks at me with growing comprehension. "What is this secret you know?"

I still don't want to meet his eyes, and I fidget uncomfortably before sliding down the wall to sit with my elbows balanced on my knees. After a moment he follows. "It's… sensitive." I catch his look and continue, "Yes, there are caps involved. Potentially a lot of them. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that I wasn't actually being hypothetical when I said it involved you." He looks at me, eyes a little bit too wide, skin a little bit too pale, and I hate myself for a moment. "See, that's why I couldn't," I gesture helplessly between him and myself, "not when I knew… it wouldn't be fair."

"So," he says his voice hoarse, "what is this secret you keep talking about? And," he continues bitterly, "How much is it worth?"

He thinks I'm looking for him to buy my silence. I object quickly, vehemently, "No! No, that isn't what this is about. It's just- You aren't what you think you are, Harkness."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

I shut my eyes as I say it. "You're an android from the Commonwealth. You know that asshole Zimmer, and his sidekick Armitage? They're here looking for you." I surprise myself with the venom in my voice when I mention Zimmer. But I sneak a glance at Harkness, and he just looks pissed off. I consider, finally, the fact that I am aggravating a creature who was probably manufactured for combat, and whose reflexes have been 'tweaked' by Pinkerton to be faster and more deadly. I have done some truly stupid things in my short lifetime, but this one may be up there in a high spot on that very long list.

He stands quickly, angrily, and I follow suit. "This is a joke. A truly, fucking stupid one. Leave now, or I will not be responsible for my actions."

I want to reach for a gun, the anger in his voice is that potent, but instead I hold my hands out placatingly, and say, "Hang on! Please, I promise you I wouldn't lie about a thing like this! This is the truth. Look, I have proof!" I offer him a holo-disk copy of Pinkerton's notes. "These are the records of the surgery and the memory wipe. It was Pinkerton, right here in Rivet City." He takes it abruptly and views all the records in text format.

I stand in silence, waiting and feeling wretched. I really wish I had just told Zimmer where he could stuff his 'Commonwealth technology' and walked out on the bastard. This is not worth it.

And I'm not going to turn him in. I don't know when I came to that decision, but there it is. I have decided what I will do, and that extends to shooting Zimmer should he try to take Harkness. That protective urge worries me. Ten seconds of lip lock with the man should _not_ have that effect. But I have made up my mind. He isn't human, but he is a person, and like fuck I am letting Zimmer treat him like property.

Harkness' shaky voice interrupts my meditations, saying plaintively, "This- this can't be true! I'm not- I cut myself shaving this morning! I bled! It was real blood, this can't be, there must be a mistake-"

I cut across him at this point, with a calm that I do not feel. "It is true. The blood was synthetic. Look, it's- God, this is ridiculous. You aren't going to believe me, and I don't blame you; I certainly wouldn't. Just… I'm sorry, alright? I wouldn't do this if you weren't in danger." I hunch my shoulders miserably and murmur, "Activate A3-21 Recall Code Violet."

I glance over at him, and can't look away. For a moment, the confused look remains on his face. Then his whole body suddenly goes rigid. His eyelids slide shut, and his eyes flick around frenziedly under the lids. Then, just when I had thought that this was all that would happen, he lets out a bloodcurdling yell. I start and turn to face him fully as the yell dissolves into quiet, unintelligible noises and his eyes open. He looks around indistinctly and says, in almost a whisper, "I remember. I remember all of it. Why?" I nearly miss the last word, it is so faint. He sways on his feet once, and then staggers backwards. I move automatically to catch him, wrapping one arm around his waist and putting my other hand on his shoulder steadyingly.

He is too heavy for me to support in my still weakened state, so I sit both of us down again. "Shit, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…" I mumble, shifting so that his security armour isn't digging into my flesh. He seems to think that I am about to stand up or walk away, because his hand shoots out and clamps onto my arm. I don't know what to do; I never should have told him. Damn it.

He stops, looking at me with veiled, mistrustful eyes and edges away from me. Talk about mixed messages. I pull my arm away, and fold it into my lap, feeling more disappointed by his absence than the situation warrants, considering he is still sitting right next to me.

"Why did you do this? No, never mind, I don't want to know. D'you know, I remember it all, now. I remember the Commonwealth, the Institute, and I remember Zimmer. I wonder if he knows how close Armitage is to becoming a runaway? It was dangerous bringing him. I remember bringing down one of his model. She was just like him, she- My God, all those runners." He shudders, and can't seem to stop himself from talking.

"And every time, just before they died, they would send me these, these ideas. About freedom, about self-determination, about person-hood and some kind of Test and all kinds of crazy things. These ideas, they'd arrive in my head, shoved under the crack in the door, like junk. And they weren't bundled up or well presented, but they- well, they shone, almost, that was how much the poor bastards believed in them. And at first I could dismiss it as faulty logic, based on incomplete information. But then more and more of them would give me this same idea, with their own hopes, or dreams, or…" his voice breaks, and he is silent for a minute. I wish I knew what to do to fix this, but I'm unsure of what to do with him and feeling responsible for the anguish he looks to be feeling right now.

He breathes in slowly, and then continues, although I don't think that I want to hear anymore. "Eventually I accepted their ideas, and when the chance came, I ran. And we are _not_ property, we are not just _things_, to be used and bought and sold!" He switches abruptly from quiet storytelling to vehement statements. "We are people, and we deserve our own lives. Now I have one. I had to give up everything to get it. You understand? _Everything_. My face, my mind, my memories, even my identity had to be sacrificed just to be allowed to live my own life, as something other than somebody's property. I won't go back."

There is silence, and presently I say quietly, almost to myself, "I'm not asking you to. It's just that, what we were… I couldn't have done that while I was concealing a thing like that. I had to tell you," because I didn't want to stop.

I can't say that to him, of course. Not now. Fuck. I am so many different kinds of stupid. "I think that I agree with what your, uh, your counterparts thought," he stiffens at my side in surprise. "Although I still don't know exactly what they thought, so maybe not. But… well, what are you going to do now?"

"First," he says, with an angry gleam appearing in his eyes, "I will stuff Zimmer into a very small box and send him back north where he belongs. Possibly many small boxes. After that," I almost miss the glance he throws in my direction, "I want to stay where I am, keep doing what I am doing now. I like this life, I want to keep it. But no one can know about what I am." He looks at me again, asking without asking: Will you keep this a secret?

I pause before answering, trying to give my words the necessary weight. "I won't tell a soul. But about Zimmer; I can give him something that will convince him that you have died. Sending pieces of him back to the Institute would only make them send out more people to look for you. News of your death would stop the hunt entirely. Will that work?"

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs gustily. "It's what I should do, isn't it? The- the _right_ thing to do, and all that bullshit. Do you know how many of us he had killed? _Deactivated_, like we were nothing more than malfunctioning fucking toasters? Too goddamn many. Right thing or not, I won't be able to sleep at night until that man is food for the Radroaches." He is breathing hard. I just nod; most of what he is talking about, most of what he is feeling is beyond me. But the urge, the need for vengeance, that I understand.

I take a deep breath, and turn back to him. "Alright. Then let me do it."

"What? Why would that make any difference?"

"Well, it'd make me feel better about opening this can of worms in the first place. Also, it would look better if a merc, an outsider were to kill Zimmer, who is just another outsider, than for the Security Chief to kill him."

He raises an eyebrow. "And I would be forced to order you out of the city. Whereas if I do it, it'll just be removing a dangerous man in order to protect the well-being of the city's residents." I avoid looking at him as I answer. "Well, I figure you'll want me gone anyways, after this. At least this way, I'll get to take whatever Zimmer's got on him before leaving town."

"That is idiotic, and I think that you know it. Tell me why you're actually trying to get me to let you do this."

It's my turn to sigh, "Look, there's a difference between killing someone because they're holding a gun to your face, or because they're about to kill someone else, and killing that person for revenge. I'm on the wrong side of that divide, and for some reason I feel that you're on the right one. I just… I want to keep it that way, alright? You should be upholding whatever law and order we have left out here - it's pretty valuable, considering how little we are able to hold on to - and I just don't think that revenge killings go well with that. You know?" He just looks at me, brow furrowed, for the longest time. I shift uncomfortably, muttering, "Or maybe I was totally wrong. Look, I'll just-"

"No. You were right," he says, his voice heavy with regret. "I want to hurt Zimmer. I really do. But I think… that you may have a point. I will create a crime, and you will kill him, with the support of the Rivet City Council." He smiles viciously. "The method of… execution… is up to you. Do try not to create too much of a disturbance. But," the smile drops from his face, "there is still Armitage. No, you can't deal with Zimmer, because Armitage will try to stop you, and I will not have another one of us killed, anymore than I will let him take Armitage back to the Institute."

Shit. I had forgotten about that. "Well then, what am I supposed to do?"

His voice is utterly cold all of a sudden, devoid of emotion. "Absolutely nothing. I will have a little… talk with Armitage, and then the two of us will deal with Zimmer. You may leave." He stands automatically – 'mechanically' I think, without humour – and walks into the science lab with his back very straight and the muscles in his arms stretched taut. I am left sitting in the dark alcove like an idiot and feeling weirdly cold wherever his body touched mine.

I sit there for a long time before I hear one gunshot, far too loud in the silence, and then two more. Then I stand and begin walking, slowly, back to the Weatherly.

/\/\/\

Yesterday Lucky Harith passed by, but he was going to the wrong way. I pawned off most of the stuff I got off of the Talon boys to him, though, because he gives me better prices for my stuff than Flak or Shrapnel, the assholes. He said Doc Hoff should be around this way, going where I want to, in a few days, and Hoff can always use extra hands (that is to say, extra guns) because he is a walking target for the Raiders with all the chems he is carrying. He also creeps me out a little, but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

I can't wait for his caravan to arrive, because another day in this stupid fucking city and I will blow my own brains across the wall. I can't take another minute of thinking about Harkness. I really can't. I want to shoot something, want to blow something up just to watch it happen, but that would bring him to me, and that just- it wouldn't work.

So I am waiting, and becoming increasingly stir-crazy as I do so.

"Hey!" I turn from slouching over the railing (brooding) to face the twin horrors, as I have 'affectionately' named them. They don't give a man a _moment's_ peace! "What's up, half-pint?" James glares half-heartedly, and turns, as usual, to C.J.

"You're leaving," she states, as if this explains perfectly their interrupting of my brooding time. I raise an eyebrow. "And?" She shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Well, it was really nice of you to teach us all that stuff," no kidding, "but you said you would get someone to teach us to shoot." Oh. Right. I have to avoid making promises like that. People remember these things.

"You can't ask them yourselves?" She gives me a look that is far too old. "James can't ask," I don't even have to ask her why she says that. "And if I say anything like that, most of them will just pat me on the head and go talk to my mom."

"Mm. I hadn't thought of that. Should I be asking your parents about this?"

"No," James declares indignantly. "No way! She can't tell me what to do anymore." I look to C.J., who is the most level-headed of the pair. She nods, and I shrug, trying to hide my dread. Finding someone who can handle a gun properly means basically a guard, or Flak or Shrapnel, and I don't really trust them. That means a guard, which means Harkness, which isn't going to happen.

Not to worry, I think. I'll just find some other trustworthy guard, and ask them inst- no, that won't work.

The problem with that statement was the word 'trustworthy', because almost no one is. He seems to be, though. To me, although I might be a little bit biased at this point… Shit. Shitting hell. No, this is bad; I am supposed to be giving him up.

This shouldn't be difficult; I mean, hell, I wasn't even interested until he… was I, though?

No, no, no. Not going down that path. Not thinking about this at all, damn it. I will talk to him, ask him to get someone to teach the little horrors to shoot, and then go home and not come back for a few months. That should be enough time for them to learn the basics, and then I can take over. I'll barely have to talk to him, just explain the situation (or invent one that works better). "Alright. Anyone in particular that you two want to deal with?" I get a pair of matching blank stares for my efforts, and sigh.

I wonder sometimes why it is that I am helping the two of them so much. I mean, returning them to the city; that was what I should have done. All this is going way above and beyond what would be expected of me, of anyone, really. I guess I want them to be prepared if they ever go out there, instead of learning things the way that I had to. But even that isn't enough, I don't think.

Whatever. Deep thinking just pisses me off lately, I won't even bother.

It's getting late, and I return to staring moodily at the point where the sea meets the sky. I'm watching the blazing ball of fire that is the sun dip ever closer, looking for all the world as if it is about to fall into the ocean, over the end of the world.

Times like this, I really cannot _understand_ how we managed to fuck up a world this spectacular. I mean, even when every fish in that ocean probably dropped dead some two hundred-odd years ago, even though there won't be seabirds circling the sky above for centuries, maybe never again, even when to touch that water would burn my skin, still it's _breathtaking_, still it is utterly, damnably, indescribably gorgeous. Still, it makes me stop and stare, makes my heart skip a beat.

Sometimes I read books that would describe a sunset before the bombs fell, or just a day spent in the fields, by the seaside, in a park, in those amazing, unlikely places they called forests, and it would make me feel such a strong longing for it – stronger even than the need to go home was in the early days – that I couldn't breathe. And they looked at it all as commonplace! To be surrounded by trees, by living things, by the sound of birdcall – I have never heard it, and that bothers me in a way that I can't even begin to express – to be so close to a place so… so magical, and then to just- to just blow it all up-

Sometimes I hate them, those people from before the wars. I hate with a burning in my chest, stronger than words can encompass. They had it, they had it _all_, and they _wasted_ it! And then they took it away from all of us, because just wasting a thing, just destroying it isn't enough; you have to destroy it forever. I will never, ever get to feel grass under my feet, never lay in the sand, never swim in the ocean, never, never, never…

I hate them and I hate this place, this washed out shell of a planet that was once so perfect, so welcoming, designed for us to live in, to live with, this place that is now barren and dreary and empty and broken. I loathe it, and yet it is still so achingly beautiful sometimes, despite us, that I can't help but love it, too.

After a while, once the sun is noticeably closer to its final destination, I notice someone else looking out at the sea. They're a long way along the deck, too far to be identified and not at all intruding into my personal contemplation. Most of the time I would either go talk to them leave. But today I am feeling curiously peaceful, almost content (and how strange it is that I can actually use that word to describe myself) and am utterly comfortable just knowing that we are both out here, sharing this strange, hostile, beautiful world, a beacon of solidarity shining against the efforts of a home that we no longer deserve, that no longer wants, shelters or protects us.

The sun sets and I return to the inside world, the world of small details where I simply can't afford to spend my time poeticizing about the grandeur of what was once our world. I leave the bigger picture behind me when I close the door to Rivet City, and I don't look back to see who was out there. Giving the symbol for humanity an actual human face would ruin the illusion.

I walk aimlessly through the Market for a while, talking to people when the urge strikes me, and then return to the Weatherly. Staying here would be bankrupting me if it weren't for the fact that Vera likes me enough to give me a room for half-rate. Payment for bringing her nephew to her safe and sound, I guess.

Nice kid, Bryan. It was strange travelling with him, though; he would go from typically youthful and talkative to utterly grave and silent in ten seconds flat, and I didn't always know why.

Doctor Preston is sitting at a table in the Weatherly, and I go over and pull up a chair. He smiles pleasantly enough at me, and says, "It looks like I got my week of rest out of you after all." I grin back, and say, "Not that I didn't try to fight that." We talk for a while, he subtly checking up on me, making sure that I am not going once again down the path of the junkie. Then, out of the blue, he asks me jokingly if I have caught my 'robot' yet. I nearly spit my weak, piss-like beer across the room, but manage to rein in that reaction. I had almost forgotten that he was the first person I had asked about the android, back when he was just the android.

"Heh. No, not yet. I think you may have been right; it was just a hoax after all. A pity though. Can you imagine having technology like that at your disposal?"

"That would be quite extraordinary, yes." We keep talking and then I excuse myself, claiming tiredness. I go to my room, undress, and lay on the bed. I stare blankly at the ceiling, unable to sleep, for what could be countless hours, or scant minutes.

I remember the times before my father seemed to lose interest in me, when he was still trying to get me interested in his work; he would tell me all sorts of things to try to pique my curiosity. I was a teenager, though, and more interested in other teenagers. Maybe my life would have been different if I had followed in his footsteps like a good son, and maybe not. The point, though, was that one of the things he told me was that all the thoughts, feelings, dreams and aspirations that I feel are actually just a result of electrical impulses in my brain firing in certain ways, travelling down certain paths.

At the time I was uninterested and also sceptical. But if he was telling me the truth, then there is almost nothing separating Harkness from any other human being; he is, after all run by electrical impulses, made with (ay least partly) biological material, and presumably has thoughts, emotions, etc.

But on the other hand, I am not supposed to be thinking about him. I shut my eyes tight and try to think of nothing. Eventually, finally, I fall asleep.

/\/\/\

The next day I talk to Harkness and he promises to include the twin monsters in the training sessions on the flight deck that take place twice a week. I tell the monsters and they, strangely enough, hug me. C.J. does, anyways, and James smiles. I feel contented again for a while (twice in the same week!).

Later on Doc Hoff makes his stop outside the city, and I hoist my packed bag onto my shoulder and make arrangements for travelling with him back to Megaton. This is one of those few times when I am grateful for the ridiculous Brahmin shit that Three Dog is always spouting about me on GNR.

And that is why I am currently sweating buckets in this disgusting leather boiler of an outfit, dragging around fifty-odd pounds of equipment and food, and just about ready to die. I am out of shape.

One or two agonizing hours later, we come to a stop at an area with some slight shelter (a few convenient rocks forming an approximate half-circle) in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The merc, Tamara sets her bag down, carves out her area with a combat knife in the sand (not a touchy-feely type, Tamara) and stalks off to investigate our surroundings.

We passed through downtown as uneventfully as possible, and we're now a day or two from Megaton. I would have covered the distance faster on my own, but travelling with a pack Brahmin loaded down with supplies is a slow, plodding affair. And I am grateful for the pace, honestly.

I crouch in the centre of our campsite and begin the slow process of starting a fire while Hoff ties his Brahmin to a sad-looking, withered old tree. I look at it dubiously, thinking that it isn't likely to hold a beast like that if it were determined to get somewhere.

I eat a slab of roasted Mirelurk and lay back beside the fire with my hands cushioning my head, warming my side by the fire. I look up at the sky and stare at the vast black expanse of emptiness and stars.

All of a sudden I am struck by a feeling of deep, unfathomable loneliness. I miss my dog. I miss my stinking home in the Vault, breathing the same recycled air and eating the same recycled shit (hopefully not literally) every day. I miss the father I barely knew, and the mother I never had. I miss my friends from inside the Vault, and out here in the Wastes. And I feel a profound longing for what-might-have-been with the man who isn't a man, living in the groaning recesses of Rivet City.

I feel alone out here, even as I lay not two feet from another living human being. I feel alone because just for a second, I can feel his hands on me. Then they're gone again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about… about a pink rhinoceros. I don't know what that is, but my father used to play a game with me. He would say, 'Don't picture a pink rhino,' and I would always win because I had no idea what they looked like. I follow the rambling course of my memories and eventually my eyes drift shut.

The next morning I wake up to the questionable odour of re-heated snack cakes and devilled eggs. I accept one from Hoff and we eat quietly. I wonder if their mornings are usually this silent, or if it is because of my presence that conversation is so stilted, and limited to requests and grunts. I finish eating and consider opening a bottle of water, then decide against it.

We walk. Later in the day we stop, and I shoot a Molerat for lunch. There is no shade anywhere, so we eat roasted Molerat in the sweltering heat. In the middle of a mouthful, I look up and around, as has become my habit lately – I prefer to know what is going on around me, whether I feel I am in danger or not. But instead of seeing anything immediately dangerous I catch a glance that could be very unhealthy in the long run. Or not. The mercenary woman, Tamara, is staring at me. There is nothing in her face that has changed from any other time I have looked at her; murky eyes, dark tanned skin, rough, sun-bleached hair, leanly-muscled limbs.

But this time the look in her dark eyes is intangibly different. I look back, and then I _look_ back and she smiles almost imperceptibly.

I should, at this point, explain that I have little in the way of preferences when it comes to intimacy with other human beings. Or, as the case may be, a quick fuck in the middle of the Wastes. That caused me considerable anguish while I was young and living in the Vault, where the stifling pre-War moral code still lived on. Especially when I couldn't decide, from a purely aesthetic view-point, whether it was Amata's graceful curves that appealed to me, or the smooth hard lines of Butch's jaw (when he wasn't using it to speak – that just killed most of his appeal for me).

Then I was thrust into this big, desperate world, where people were mostly too busy trying not to be killed or eaten or irradiated to care who you want to screw.

Of course, people still enjoy engaging in prejudice – would we be able to call ourselves human if we didn't hate a large section of our population irrationally? But it doesn't really _matter_, out here, if some weird old man disapproves of my tastes because in all likelihood I will be gone within the week and if not, well, I have a gun, and I'm pretty good with it these days.

And so that night, after Hoff has gone to sleep near the two-headed beast of burden (but not too near – the things just reek) I stand up and catch her eye. She nods and follows me when I walk a few metres away from the camp, behind a convenient bunch of almost-trees, within earshot but not eyeshot of the good Doctor.

The whole thing is a process that is, if not familiar then at least not utterly alien to me; we all experience these attractions, and the omnipresent sexual tension, and so we relieve it in the easiest way possible – sex, minus the emotional attachment that some people still insist upon, even when the world has actually, literally, gone to hell. I'm not really used to it, but I need something to chase off the memory of his lips on mine. She probably has someone that she is trying to drown in my face and hands and body too, so I don't feel badly about it.

We are almost completely silent and motionless, standing there in the darkness with nothing but moonlight to see the other by. I peel off my jacket and put my weaponry on top of it and she does the same. Most of my other clothing follows suit.

We stand facing one another and mostly undressed, a scant few steps away from each other and our belongings form two neat little piles, side-by-side. I think about how strange it is that an entire human existence can be whittled down to these two battered piles, sitting desolate and alone in a sandy, barren waste. Then she draws her rough, calloused hands across my chest without preamble and I stop thinking and let myself just feel.

I push my lips against hers, once fleetingly and then again. She pulls me closer, demandingly, and tugs at my remaining clothing. I cooperate and then we are standing there, both naked and panting lightly. I just look at her for a minute, admiring the sinewy grace of her body.

Then we just give in to the animal flow of it. I feel her hair, thick and coarse and smelling of, well, hair. I feel the skin of her thighs, her breasts, surprisingly soft under my hands. And then the deep, mind-numbing, enclosing heat and her short, blunt nails making paths down my back, and someone's name on my lips. Not hers. But then, it wasn't my name that she called, either.

We catch our breaths, clean (sort of), and dress. Then I sit cross-legged in the dirt and look at her. "Mind if I smoke?" She looks at me, slightly puzzled. "What?"

"Sorry. I read it in an old pre-War book once. So, uh, why did you want to," I gesture ineffectually. She looks at me, bemused, so I elaborate, "Lonely? Not had any in a while? Waiting for someone?" She laughs, her voice emerging low and husky. "All three, I guess. Obviously the first two and the third, well, he… he's gone." I know that voice, by now. Well enough not to ask, at least.

"Same with me. Sort of. But I am trying more to forget someone than waiting to see them again." She just nods.

We talk a little bit, about where we've come from and how we ended up where we are, and then I go to sleep beside the fire. She stays out for a little while longer. Just before I fall asleep I see her move back into the camp site, but I barely register it.

/\/\/\

I'm home. The journey took another day, but there was no repeat performance that night with Tamara and the next day we parted ways. I greet a few people, talk to Lucas about what's going on in the larger world outside of Megaton, and go home. I barely make it through the door before the dog leaps at me. My arms tense, wanting to grab him and throw him away, but I resist that urge. It costs me, though, because it allows the dog to knock me onto my ass and set about licking my face enthusiastically.

I laugh and push him away, rubbing his head. "Has Wadsy been treating you well? Feeding you?" I feel around his ribs and stomach, and then laugh again. "Yes he has. You, my dear companion, are overweight!" He licks my face again, and offers me a wide doggy-grin, assaulting my senses with dog breath. "Eurgh! God, dog, point that somewhere else, that stench is _dangerous_."

He wags his tail and pants into my face.

I stand, and am accosted by Wadsworth, who is horrified by my filthiness and also the state of my hair. I ask if he has installed the purifier on the pipe running into my house, and he replies in the affirmative. Excellent. I stride off towards the tiny room that calls itself a bathroom and turn on the water flow into the tub, which comes out looking somewhat cleaner than it was before I left. I leave the water running and then slip my hand in. I feel the strange and familiar burning, but this is weaker, more like a light shock than anything else.

It's barely lukewarm, but that's fine because I don't intend to spend a lot of time in the water – that's a great way to rack up the rads. I dump my clothes beside me and slide into the water, and have to bite down on a groan. I know I shouldn't stay in the water for too long, but _god_, does this feel good after sleeping on the rock-hard ground for days. I clean myself properly, for the first time in I don't know how long. Might be weeks.

I pull myself out of the bath tub and let all the water drain. Such is the nature of the system that I will probably be drinking that water again on the inside of a week, but that's fine with the new filter Wadsy's installed on my 'plumbing'.

And yes, those quotation marks are totally necessary, because what passes for plumbing around here (everywhere, really) is just disgusting. But whatever, the point is; somewhat clean water! I dry myself off and put on underwear. Then the robot bustles into the room, and I jump with surprise before grasping at my clothing. "God, don't do that Wadsy!"

It just glides closer and says "I have been programmed with a number of hair styles, if you would like to choose one, Master?" in a not-so-subtle suggestion that I am in need of a haircut. It's right, though; I have about a week's worth of stubble on my face, which is growing into a straggly mini-beard, and the hair on my head is dark brown and dirty, long, tangled and unruly. Not to mention it falls into my face too often, and I had to use my headband to patch up my bag a few weeks back. So, shorter hair is apparently a must.

I sigh and sit down with my back to the machine. "Alright. Cut it short. I don't really care what you do with it; just leave it short enough that it won't bother me. And, take off the hair on my face too." An appendage with a pair of tweezers attached to it appears, and I hurriedly correct myself, "Not the eyebrows, please."

"Of course Master." I've made that mistake once, and I won't make it again. I sit still and try not to fall asleep as blades whir and scissors snip around my head, and then the movement stops and I am presented with a mirror to view Wadsy's work. My face is once again fully visible, and cleanly shaved, with dark, grey-green eyes staring back at me. My hair is cropped somewhat closer to my head, being only an inch or two long, and if I was a barber like good old Butch (he was so touchy about that, and i got a good manly job as a mechanic, so i rubbed it in his face) I could do something inventive like mould it into spikes.

Sometimes I forget that this is my face. It hasn't changed that much since I left the Vault: harsher-looking, more gaunt and filthy most of the time, but the same face. Still, every once in a while I'll pass by a reflective surface and not recognize myself. It's something about my eyes.

Tired of pointless contemplation, I stumble into the bedroom, fall into bed and pass out.

/\/\/\

I wake up and luxuriate for a minute in the feeling of warm sheets and a soft bed. Then I realize that the reason I am so warm and comfortable is that the dog has leapt onto my bed in the night, and is now sprawled across the bed next to me. And he is stinking up my only clean sheets. Hell, my only sheets period. I try to shift him so that I can get up, but he just huffs into my face and shifts more of his weight onto my torso. I groan and sit up anyways, unseating the dog in the process.

He whines and looks at me accusatively. I ignore him in favour of dressing myself.

Dressed, armed and halfway out the door, I suddenly realize that I don't know what to do. I could offer to help Walter with the upkeep in the water processing plant, because he always seems to need it, or I could go play mercenary again for a while. I don't really feel up to doing the death dance with a nest of Muties any time soon, so manual labour it is.

I spend that day, hell, most of the next three weeks, selling the bits of scrap that I have no use for and running around fixing leaks or repairing problems with the processing plant, of which there are many. The dog likes to tag along behind me, and so he does. I suppose that he wasn't happy with my leaving him here with the kids and the robot.

Almost every night is spent at Moriarty's, talking to Gob and getting drunk. That is another reason I keep the dog with me; people may have no qualms about beating up some random drunk guy, but a random drunk guy with a giant slavering dog is another story altogether. Gob is always happy for my presence, poor bastard, and I can't really blame him. It amazes me that people can treat him the way they do when he is such a good person, and in such a terrible situation, but what the fuck. That's humanity for you.

I almost want to give him the money to pay Moriarty off, but then he'd be a charity case, and he'd know it. And Moriarty, malicious fucker that he is, would never leave him alone after that. And then what? I mean, I'm hardly ever home, so I guess he could stay there, but what would he do? In a town like this, where the only thing they seem to hate more than Moriarty is the poor bastard that is Moriarty's punching bag, it just wouldn't work. What the hell kind of sense does that make, anyways?

And of course, I can't really spare that many caps, either. I snort into my drink; that is a lie, really. I can afford to buy schematics and spare parts from Moira and the travelling merchants, so I have more caps to spare than most people who scrape their lives out in the Wastes. I just don't want to give up my little luxuries, hypocrite that I am.

I see Moriarty stagger out of his back room, drunk and pissed off. He looks around blearily for a victim, and his gaze lights on Gob, who backs slightly, imperceptibly away from Moriarty and towards me. Then Moriarty, the weasel, notices me and backs down, if only for the moment. He knows how I feel about his treatment of Gob, and he knows when he is outclassed, and outgunned. And happily, the dog doesn't like him either, and whenever he comes close, the dog's hackles rise. But like he said to me once, I can't stay here forever, and Moriarty will get his way eventually.

The thought makes me sick, and I am filled with this hot, restless feeling. I need to do something, I have to. I won't be able to live with myself if I don't at least try.

"Hey Gob," he turns towards me, still looking wary from Moriarty's threat. "I, uh, you know I'm not home a lot of the time, yeah? So, the house is empty. And, if you wanted to stay somewhere other than this… charming establishment, you're welcome to… I think that the couch does this cool thing where you can open it up and it turns into a bed…" I trail off, not sure what to say. I almost wish I hadn't said anything at all. He is staring at me like I've started speaking Mutie, and I can feel Nova's eyes on me as well.

His voice, low and close to broken at the best of times, almost hurts me to listen to right now. "You... you mean that? You aren't just messing?" Unspoken; 'it wouldn't be the first time.'

"Yeah, I mean it. And," I know that I will regret this, but I can't stop myself, not when he is looking at me like that, "I'll… talk… to dear Colin if he has any objections." Now Nova is definitely staring, and Gob seems to be having trouble forming actual words, although his mouth opens and closes every once in a while. I set my key on the counter, quietly, saying, "I'll have Wadsy make me another copy tonight. If you don't want to, then just, give the key back later, all right? Good night," I say, and stand up, suddenly far too tired.

"Hey, Vaultie." Gob's voice makes me halt for a moment. "Thanks for this. I might just take you up on it."

I nod, "No problem," and signal for my dog. He stands up, tail wagging, and I walk out of the bar's murky yellow ambient lighting, into the slightly cleaner night air.

I sway gently on my feet as I try to walk forward, and grasp the metal railing along the side of the walkway for support. The taste of the vodka was not as good as it could have been, since it was served lukewarm, but it did serve its purpose in chasing the lingering chill from my body. I don't know when it started exactly, but the air feels cooler now and I feel cold. Not the kind of cold that you can chase away with vodka (though I have been trying), nor barricade yourself from with blankets and jackets. It's a cold that I feel in my bones, a loneliness that I feel saturating my whole existence. I want… I want… God, I want my father, I want my home and I want to see the people I have known since I was a young child. I want a family; my old one, a new one, I don't care. Anything that will hold off the darkness, the absolute despair that I feel now, as I stand here, alone in the night outside a hideous seedy bar, gripping a handrail for dear life and drunk off of my face.

I shiver, despite or maybe because of the alcohol induced haze I'm enveloped in. The dog nudges me with his nose and whines, so I look at him questioningly. He tilts his head at me and weirdly enough, I understand. I turn towards my home and begin walking.

/\/\/\

I wish I knew a lot of things. I wish I knew why my father left, what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life, how to get back into the Vault and forget the outside world with its ugliness and its hatred and its heartbreaking beauty. I wish I knew how to turn back time.

But I don't, so I just stumble through my life like a drunk in the dark.

And right now, tonight, I want to stumble back to Rivet City. I want to go back there and tell him that he is in my head, that I need him to kindly vacate the premises, that I want him. I want to know if he feels it, if he feels anything at all. I want to kiss him again, just once. No, not just once. Again and again and again, until I can stop thinking about him, and about home, about where the hell home is now. Stop thinking about everything.

That isn't going to happen though, of course. Nothing ever seems to work out for me anymore.

It's so strange; for the first nineteen years of my life, I was blessed and then out of the blue, for no discernible reason, it all went straight to hell. I was so smart, and I knew how to deal with people, and people seemed to like me. I had a father who, while far from perfect, was kind and serious and made the effort to be what I needed. I had no mother, but I could never remember her, so her loss didn't hurt me the way it hurt my father. I had a job, and I even sort of enjoyed it, despite my bullshitting through the G.O.A.T.

Then my father walked out, and I was made to follow. I didn't want to leave, but the Overseer must have gone batshit insane that night, because I know that I would not have seen the next morning if I had stayed in the Vault. At the time, that had me fucking terrified. At the time, swearing, even inside my head, would have made me turn up my nose. Now, both the prospect of immanent death and the constant swearing are… well, they're like background noise, most of the time. They're what I live with every day. People adjust to strange things, and apparently this is one of them.

That's not to say that we are unharmed or unaffected by the constant strain, the constant pressure. We would have to be more than human, to be unaffected by it. I mean, look at the Raiders. I would have to look very deep inside myself to find even a glimmer of sympathy for the bastards, but it does exist. They are one of the worst reactions to the madness that is our new world, our 'home'. Most people just quietly go a little bit crazy. They get paranoid, they form obsessions, they fixate on strange and unnecessary things; anything to block out the world that we live in.

So I am not, of course, impervious to the madness that we all have. I am breaking down, slowly but surely, and it is the ultimate cruelty that I can see it happening but am helpless to stop it. I feel it, all the time. It makes me crazy, makes me restless, it makes me want to run away from everything. And I can't I know I could never escape it all, and that makes me even more crazy, even more restless and edgy and agitated and then I can barely control myself and I have to be away from people for fear of what I might do.

And then one day I was hurt, badly. I tried to fix it up, but my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't. I could barely see straight, it hurt so much. So I gave myself some Med-X, and that chased the worst of the pain away. But it also dulled the edge of my thoughts, my desperate gaping loneliness and the horrifying chasm of my fear; it was all subdued and restrained by the fuzzy haze.

So I kept taking it. After awhile I needed it, just to function. And now I don't have it, I need to stop using it, and the house of cards that I had built for myself, to keep myself sane, is all crashing down around my ears.

I need, I need, I… What do I need? What do I want? I don't even know anymore. I want to live a quiet, stupid, happy life and never have to look outside again. I want to live and die in a small, unimportant corner of nowhere, and never see this place again. I want what I can't have. I want dark eyes and strong hands and a quiet smile.

God, I hate this place. And, just as strongly, I love it. Why? I don't know. But sometimes, when I'm all alone, or surrounded by people that are still here, still living against all odds and expectations, sometimes I love it so much that it hurts. And that is why I stay, why I keep on going, why I don't just walk into a Talon camp one day and say, 'Here I am you fuckers, try and catch me.' Because as much as I loathe this place, I love it more.

And I am going to Rivet City tomorrow. Because I have to ask myself, do I really have much left to lose?

/\/\/\

Never a good question to ask, I think.

Colvine


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **Well, I do own a copy of Fallout 3.

**Warnings:** Keep in mind that this is a fanfic of an M-rated game. So, swearing, violence, drug use and sexual themes are possible. Most of them are probable, too.

**Humanity**

I growl, the sound reverberating satisfyingly through my chest, and even Moriarty looks slightly taken-aback. I suppose he should – the growl was meant to intimidate, although on the surface it was because I just hit my arm on the edge of the bar. No one is fooled by this.

And I do look somewhat imposing just now. I am leaving this morning, and so I have my steadfast leather bag on my back, and clothing that is as protective as any I can find. It is mostly the useable scrap I pull from departed Talon boys (and now that I think about it, they are mostly boys, aren't they? Very few Talon girlies, although they are pretty fucking scary, when you do run across one), all cleaned up and supplemented with leather gear that I buy from Moira.

She was very happy with the records I pulled from Pinkerton's terminal, and apart from the reward, (which was very nice) I will be getting something of a discount when I visit the Rivet City shopkeepers. Conveniently enough, that is exactly where I am going.

And of course, I have the tools of the trade on my person. That is to say, guns. All over my person, really. The point is that I would be kind of insulted if Moriarty didn't look out of sorts.

Gob came over last night looking apprehensive, as though I would turn around and laugh at him any minute, and take my offer back. That makes me unaccountably angry. I welcomed him in, showed him around, introduced him to the robot and told him that I was planning on leaving tomorrow. If it is possible for a Ghoul to blanch, he did it when I said that. I was confused for a minute, and then I realized. "Oh, shit. Moriarty." The 'rat-fuck bastard,' part of the sentence doesn't even need to be vocalized.

He looked at me, and I sighed. Then, out of nowhere, I grinned. "Don't worry. Colin and I will have a little heart-to-slimy-orifice talk, just the two of us. I'll bring the heart, and…" Despite himself, the patchwork man had smiled. Then I realized, suddenly and out of nowhere that I had a room mate and no idea what to do with him. "Uh, make yourself at home, I guess," I said, trailing off uncertainly.

I don't really know how to operate with other human beings. The closest I ever got was my father, and he is hardly a standard sort of man. So normal (and I use the term loosely) people bewilder me. Although I guess that I'd be hard-pressed to find someone normal in this nice little shit-hole I call home these days.

The point was that I had gone to sleep feeling vaguely uncomfortable and hoping that I didn't talk in my sleep. And now I am standing here, wondering if I am a fool for caring, for trying to do something. The answer is obviously yes, but that doesn't really change anything. It never has.

I smile grimly at Moriarty, and then turn to Nova, telling her that I plan on leaving for Rivet City today, and I should be back in a few weeks. She gives me a stretched smile, asks me jokingly whether I plan on being on the radio again, and I laugh. "Nah. That always seems to be more trouble than it's worth." I turn to Moriarty and, in a deceptively neutral voice say, "Oh and I've invited Gob to stay at my house while I'm gone. Keep an eye on my things, you know? I hope you don't mind."

He glares at me, grumbles, "Yeah, whatever kid. Buy something or get out of here." I nod, knowing that I've won, for now. "Sure thing, Colin. One for the road please, Gob." He passes me a beer and I slide the caps across the counter. He doesn't meet my eyes while Moriarty is in the room – that is just giving him an excuse to start something – but as soon as the bastard is out of the room he looks up and grins at me and I decide that maybe this was worth it, because Gob is actually fucking smiling. It's sad that this is such a monumental thing, to have him smile.

"I'll see you in a few weeks. Take care, Gob, Nova." Then I turn and walk out of the bar. The dog follows closely, sniffing eagerly, and I decide that bringing him was a good idea, if only for the value of his companionship. I'm not really fond of travelling in the Wastes most of the time.

Of course, there are always times when it is so worth it, just to be out there on your own. I can almost feel like I'm the only person in the world, sometimes. It's a surprisingly pleasant feeling. Or maybe it isn't so surprising, considering the majority of my fellow human beings. I don't know.

* * *

It only takes me two days of travelling to reach Rivet City. Less even, because I have arrived by the night of the second day. It helps that I kept mostly to the subway tunnels, I suppose. I arrive and make a beeline for the market. I always end up carrying extra crap that I have picked up travelling, and my back is killing me because I've been carrying it around all day.

I sell what I don't need, as well as a few things that I would have preferred not to part with. Working with Walter means I have some caps to spare, but not enough to be throwing them around thoughtlessly. Then I head for the Weatherly for a room. When I arrive, Vera is 'unavailable,' but at a table I see C.J. talking quietly to Bryan Wilks. They're leaning close to each other and looking positively enraptured.

I can't imagine that James is happy.

I wonder once again how old the little monsters are. Then the girl notices me, then leaps up and hugs me. I'm not really sure how to react in a non-creepy fashion to a teenage girl attaching herself to my waist, so I just pat her back and wait until she lets go. Luckily, that time comes around quickly. "You're back," she declares, grinning.

"I'm back. How're you?"

"I'm good. We've been practicing shooting with the guards, and James is really good at it, and I can open the lock on that filing cabinet on the second try now, and-"

"Whoa, you've been busy, then?" She nods eagerly. "Yeah."

"Well, good. I've gotta go talk to Miss Weatherly, but I'll come and see you in a bit, alright?" She nods, and I turn to Bryan. "Hey, Bryan. How're you?" He smiles (sort of) and grunts. I translate it to mean something like 'fine,' so I move on. "Haven't seen your aunt around, have you?" He points to the back room. Not a talkative kid.

I nod my thanks and knock on Vera's door. She answers and smiles at me brightly. Too brightly to be just friendly I think. Maybe there was another reason for her letting me stay for a cut-rate. I can't decide if that's good or not. We exchange pleasantries and then I pay for a week in one of her rooms. I deposit my bag in my room and despite feeling slightly naked without it; I sit with her for a while and talk about nothing, drinking a beer.

The good doctor eventually drifts in, as does Angela's father. What the hell's his name? Grady? No, it's Gary. We sit around a table in the pleasant, slightly dark room for what feels like a few comfortable hours, and then I stand up and make for the door, saying my goodnights.

The hallway outside the Weatherly has a flickering light somewhere, and it's dark and musty and smells vaguely of something unpleasant. I hear footsteps approaching, harsh, loud and metallic, and feel tempted to duck into the room and avoid whoever it is. But I spend a few moments too long considering, and the person heralded by the footsteps arrives. I turn, and open my mouth to say good evening to whomever and see, of course, him. Harkness. I open my mouth, and then realize that whatever I say will sound idiotic, and close it again. He looks at me strangely, so I give in to the strong urge to smile. And then, despite my earlier intentions, I open my mouth and pray that nothing too senseless will emerge.

"Hey. I, uh- How are you?" I wince inwardly at the stuttering but continue smiling outwardly. He looks at me for a moment, dark eyes unreadable, "Fine. And you?" Then he returns my awkward baring of teeth with a small, edged grin of his own. Something about the look gives me back my confidence (and just where the hell it had buggered off to I will never know), and I ask him if he's busy, and if he wants a drink with me. The answers are negative and affirmative, respectively, and so I walk down to the Muddy Rudder with him.

We arrive to an almost empty bar, dark and murky in the late evening (it must be eleven or twelve by now) and settle at a secluded table in the corner. We order a few beers each, and I decide that I have been drinking too much because I hardly feel the effects. Then I ask for vodka and he gets a scotch. Once she leaves I lean forward, for privacy and just because I want to, and speak in a husky sort of almost-whisper so that he has to come closer to hear me (and because I want him to). "Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm kind of curious – do you actually get drunk?"

He gives me a strange look, and then smiles. "We'll see, won't we?"

I stare at him for a minute, and then throw my head back and laugh like a madman. The drinks arrive – two bottles and two glasses – and I stop. My stomach aches. I realize that I haven't laughed like that in, God, in what feels like years but is probably only a few months. Since before leaving the vault, when I paid a visit to good old Butch Deloria in the barber's salon and caught him singing along to some old record he'd found. I got free haircuts for life to keep that little moment of his to myself. For all the good that does me now.

He grins a challenge at me and drinks a ridiculous amount from his bottle. I have to stop and look at him for a moment to be sure that this is indeed Harkness, because this behaviour does not compute. But he appears to be the real deal, and also slightly worse for wear after the beer and scotch and not much food.

I think about how I am likely to act around a drunken Harkness and decide that if I am drunk also then everything will be alright.

This logic is extremely shaky but I decide not to question it and instead smirk and match him, drink for drink, through the rest of our respective bottles. Then I look up at him and see three of him floating around my field of view. I reach forward and, through a process of trial and error, locate the most solid version of his face. He looks on in what seems to be a state of inebriated amusement.

I draw the face forward to meet my own, hastily and clumsily, but am rudely interrupted by a nose before I can reach my objective. He makes an impatient noise and compensates, while I do the same thing in the same direction, and then we both thrust our faces forward, head butting each other. We freeze and look at the other wide-eyed, trying to decipher the past few incidents. And then, as one being, a bright flash pf understanding illuminates us and we begin to roar with laughter. This gets us 'escorted' out of the Muddy Rudder by a laughing bouncer.

Outside, the air of hilarity slowly disperses and we are left standing in a deserted stairwell staring at one another. I step towards him and he mirrors me. I'm vaguely conscious of a voice objecting to this particular course of action, but I ignore it in favour of nudging Rivet City's security chief into a dark corner and sticking my tongue down his throat.

He lets me, but he doesn't make any move to encourage me. Drunkenly confused and frustrated, I wrap an arm around his waist to see if I can mould us any closer together, trying to provoke a reaction, and then finally disconnect my mouth from his to breathe. I had forgotten to. I press close to him again, and he lets me, and I twist my head carefully so I can get the kiss right this time. He doesn't move and so I trail my tongue along his lip insistently. I feel a burning heat begin to spread through my stomach and I let go of his mouth to affix my mouth to his neck.

Then he looks at me and for once I see only one set of eyes. After another short bout of unspoken communication we are heading to my room outside the Weatherly. I don't feel as drunk or fuzzy anymore, and I sort of regret it, because if I were still I could pretend that this is nothing. I could pretend that he is playing more of a part in this than the strangely inert dummy. I could pretend that he is interested, and I wouldn't have to talk about it until the morning after, and I wouldn't be thinking about the morning after, either.

And then we are inside my room and he pushes me into the wall, one of my wrists pinned beside my head, and all my doubts vanish. My stomach's been set on fire, my spine's been replaced with molten lava, and I am burning up. His mouth is on mine, and his body is pressed flush against mine and it's all I can do not to collapse. I taste his tongue in my mouth, and decide that I am taking far too passive a role in all this.

I walk forward nudging him along. The backs of his legs come up against a bed and he sits back on the bad, looking at me expectantly. I move forward to straddle his legs, sliding my hands up under his shirt, drawing a startled breath from him before I lean forward and continue kissing, slightly frenziedly. I have wanted this for too long, and it feels so good, too good, now that I have it.

Removing our clothes is an awkward process because I can't seem to bring myself to take my hands off of him long enough for the clothes to be removed, and he is having similar problems. I struggle out of my shirt and immediately return to licking and sucking my way down his neck towards his exposed collar-bone and now-bare chest. I bite down on the surprisingly pale flesh, wanting to mark it, to mark him. He makes an urgent noise in the back of his throat and curves his back up towards me. I take a second to wonder just what the hell I'm doing before my wonderful hindbrain reminds my inhibitions to shut the hell up and enjoy the ride. Then I'm lost.

I push him onto his back and continue my progress along his chest until I reach a soft brown nipple. I lick it and he clutches my back with both hands, then I fold my lips around it experimentally. He groans and pulls me against him, nails digging into my back. His hips push upward, seeking contact.

It's my turn to groan, and I grind back down against him and kiss him again. I feel his hands in my hair, on my shoulders, travelling up and down my back before ghosting over my ass. Then in a whirl I am on my back and he is on top of me, pressing down in a blinding heat and his hands are on my face, my sides, and my crotch and it's all I can do to match his movements.

Then I am arching up off of the bed and babbling incoherently, and probably calling his name and making a mess of him and myself. Maybe that pushes him over the edge because then he comes and it is probably the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen, all tensing muscles and head thrown back and my name, of all things. It makes me an entirely different kind of warm, the kind that makes me want to curl around him and hold him to my chest and not let go. And because we're both on a post-coital (and alcohol) buzz and dead tired, I do just that, and fall asleep.

Save worrying for the morning.

* * *

I wake up warm, comfortable and sticky. That tends to mean a good night, although the fact that I can't seem to remember much of it makes me slightly uneasy. Finally, reluctantly, I open my eyes.

And immediately shut them again, suddenly remembering many bits and pieces of last night, all at once. And, seeing him there, fast asleep, brings up some strange feelings. I mean, I don't think I know his first name for fuck's sake. Then again, that isn't really a big deal, is it?

I should wake him. I really don't want to, so instead I get out of the bed, trying to move it as little as possible. Then I set about cleaning myself and finding the less dirty bits of clothing, which is all I have learned to hope for since I am not a do-it-yourself sort of person when it comes to laundry. I do try to clean things; I just don't really get the desired results. That is to say, things often end up dirtier after I attempt to clean them than before.

When I turn back to the bed I had been studiously avoiding with my gaze, I see him sitting upright and looking at me strangely. Uncomfortable, I look away and have to force myself not to rub at the back of my neck. "So… D'you remember much of last night?" He laughs, and I'm not sure whether to be offended by his calmness (is this a common thing for him?) or reassured by it. It doesn't help that the sound of it feels so contagious to me.

"Well, I remember insults to someone's masculinity, and then a drinking contest," which I won, by the way, "and after that we were… thrown out of a bar. On my own boat." It reads like a statement but he says it like a question, probably wondering exactly how trustworthy his recollections are beyond this point. "Hm. Not exactly my most dignified moment, I think. After that I can't say I remember anything but… flashes and random images. But," looking at the state of his clothing and the bed itself, "apparently we enjoyed ourselves."

That's all he says. I was hoping for more to work with, to see how he is taking the fact that we kind of slept together, but I'm getting nothing. Time to take the leap of faith then, I guess. "Well, I- Would you be willing to keep on 'enjoying yourself'? With me, in, you know, a mutually exclusive sort of way?" For a minute I am afraid that I'll have to explain the phrase mutually exclusive, but then he smiles at me.

Sometimes I forget why I am willing to traverse ridiculous expanses of wasteland and brave the ridiculous, crazy dangers that populate it. Sometimes I don't really understand why I care for him so much, why I get warm thinking about him, why I would leave my life (what's left of it) behind to stay with him. Sometimes I think that I must be a fool. But right now, in this moment, I understand; I'm in what could be, if you stretched things a bit, love.

And yes, I really am a fool.

We probably won't say anything, because that isn't how the wasteland works. You defend your vulnerable points, and the heart is one of them (in more ways than one, as any mutie would tell you). It's stupidity to let someone near you, to let your guard down so easily. But still, he smiles that smile for me again, tells me that he wouldn't mind.

I shut my eyes for a minute, feeling inordinately tired all of a sudden. I feel hands fall onto my shoulders and I have to fight down my instincts to leap up and reach for a weapon. Then I lean back into the touch as the fingers being kneading at the knots in my shoulders. I rest the back of my head against his shoulder and sigh, content to fall asleep again, when there is a thumping from the general area of the door. The muscles in my neck and shoulders tighten again and I stand reluctantly.

Harkness' voice comes from behind me unexpectedly and I turn to face him. "We'll continue some other time, then. I may also have to borrow a pair of pants." I smile and then stand and stride across the room to open the door. James stands at the door with his fist poised to knock again.

"I need to talk to you," he mutters, not looking me in the eye, his voice low and husky. I've just realized how little this kid actually talks.

"Yeah, alright." I look behind me to see Harkness standing with an arm propped against the wall, head tilted sideways and regarding me curiously. "I'm fine, go ahead. I'm going to go to the tower and find myself a clean uniform. I'll bring these back to you later today." I smile and move to the side to let him past me.

When he's gone James looks at me curiously, obviously wanting to ask something and trying to frame the question properly. "Don't worry about it kid," I say pre-emptively as we walk unconsciously towards the room in which I taught the pair a few months ago. "Something is obviously bothering you. Care to tell me what it is?" I don't really understand what this feeling is, this urge to help and guide this kid, give him anything he needs that I could give. I don't understand it and I don't know where it comes from. I think that maybe it is the closest I'm going to get to a paternal instinct. That makes about as much sense as anything else; the boy certainly could do with someone, and I feel something that feels suspiciously like affection for him, far too often these days.

And of course I feel a strong urge to slap his mother every time I see her interact with him, which is probably something to do with the protective instinct also.

"I don't- It's just that-" he cuts himself off, then shuts his mouth and screws up his eyes, trying to decide what to say. While he is deciding, I push open the door and settle on one of the three chairs around a table missing a leg, which is propped up against a wall. He throws himself into the chair opposite me and sighs. "It's all Bryan's fault."

I feel a little bit of dread as I realize what this is about, and that I may indeed be picking over –shudder- _feelings_ with a teenage boy. I guess it makes sense, because who the hell else is he going to talk to? But still.

"And I- He's not even- She just thinks that he's so great, and- It's not fair! We've been friends since before I can remember, and I- It isn't fair!"

I have to take a moment to decipher his halting comments, and then I run a hand through my hair. "Since when have things ever been fair? You gotta tell me what's wrong before I can help, you know." He scowls and looks away, fiddling agitatedly with a fraying seam on his pants.

"I just don't know what to do. She was my best friend, and now all she talks about is him. And she's always with him, and,"

"And you're jealous." I say it matter-of-factly, without the slightest accusatory tone, but still he colours and glares at me defensively. "Maybe I am. So?" I smile – laughing would put him on guard – and say, "No, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just saying; you wish that she would feel about you like she seems to feel about him."

"Yeah, maybe," he mutters guardedly. "I'm not sure how much I can help you with that, unfortunately. Emotions are tricky. Does she know?"

He looks surprised by the last question. "No. Of course she doesn't. How am I supposed to tell her that? She's so... I just can't," he says, looking away.

"Well then how do you know that she doesn't feel the same, and is only talking to Bryan because she thinks _you_ aren't interested? You have to tell people these things James, they don't just know." He stares at me in consternation, unable to articulate the problems with this statement. "You think she'd feel the same?"

"You'll never know unless you say something, will you?"

"But what if she doesn't?" I sigh, wishing that he hadn't spotted this glaring problem with my instructions. "Well, that'll hurt. But will it really be worse than how you are now?"

He scowls down at his hands as though they are to blame for all of his problems. "No, probably not. But then, if she doesn't, are we still going to be friends? What if she hates me?"

"I don't know, kid. I don't have those kinds of answers for you. But I don't think that she'll hate you. If you want to stick with just being friends, then that's your choice. But then she might stay with Bryan, or somebody else, and I bet you wouldn't like that." He shakes his head vehemently, and I hide a grin. "So yeah, it's a gamble. But most of the things in life that are worthwhile are, you know? So do what'll make you happy."

I feel sort of badly for giving James advice that might end up hurting Bryan, but I feel so sorry for the kid, and I'm hardly going to tell him to keep quiet about it. God, this is stupid. James stands to slip out the door, but hesitates and turns back for a moment at the threshold. "I… thanks. For, y'know, listening." He almost smiles at me, and I almost smile back. "Anytime."

Then he walks out, and I let out a deep breath and grope around in my pocket for the whiskey that I keep on me for occasions just such as this, and take a gulp. I don't know why, but I'm always on tenterhooks when I'm talking to that boy. I don't want to screw things up, don't want to give him any reason not to trust me. It always leaves me feeling a little drained.

I should be talking to Harkness, dealing with our new thing, figuring out what it actually is, what I want it to be, and what he wants it to be, and just how close those two ideas are. I should be trying to find my father, trying to save the world, or at least looking for somewhere relatively safe where I can live out the rest of my miserable life, in this miserable place.

But I'm not going to. I'm going to sit in the Muddy Rudder, pass most of my day there. Then I'm going to go out on deck and watch the sun set on the water. I'll deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

* * *

Hey guys (if anyone, other than the two people lovely enough to review, is reading this), I'm thinking of ending it here, but I'm wondering if that would be too abrupt. Tell me what you think?

Colvine


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